SELF HELP 
FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 



" Endue my body with such measure of health as 
may suffice it for the obeying of the Spirit, that I may 
pass the day unhindered and in quietness — ." 

Aristides (Pater's translation) 

" The priests of JLsculapius . . . were far from tak- 
ing a materialistic view of the Soul. They supple- 
mented the notion that an unsound mind can be cured 
through the body by another to which they attached 
every importance, i.e. that the sound mind can and 
should completely control the sound body." 

Dyer. The gods in Greece. 



SELF HELP 
FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

FAMILIAR TALKS ON ECONOMY 
IN NERVOUS EXPENDITURE 



JOHN K. MITCHELL, M.D. 

FELLOW OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF PHILADELPHIA, AT- 
TENDING PHYSICIAN TO THE PHILADELPHIA ORTHOPiEDIC 
HOSPITAL AND INFIRMARY FOR NERVOUS DISEASES 



PHILADELPHIA 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDies Recerved 

JAN 28 1809 

Cc-pyrtent tntry 
«LA3S Qw XXc. No, 



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Copyright, 1909 
By J. B. Lippincott Company 



Electrotyped and printed by J. B. Lippincott Company 
The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U. S. A. 



PREFACE 

At the suggestion of the Editor of 
Harper's Bazar I wrote in 1901 a 
series of short articles partly as 
advice to nervous women, partly as 
counsel to those who were in danger 
of becoming nervous. 

The many letters received during 
and after their publication indicated 
an interest which has led to the ex- 
pansion and rewriting of the brief 
papers then published, incorporating 
some of the suggestions and answer- 
ing some of the questions of those 
correspondents. The familiar style 
has been retained, as it seemed the 
easiest and most direct way of get- 
ting into personal relation with the 
readers. 

Much of the advice may be criti- 



PREFACE 

cised as old; if so it is none the 
worse for having stood the test of 
time and service. Indeed all good 
advice is old, and no newer than good 
conduct or the necessity for it. 

The book is not intended for doc- 
tors and it has been my endeavor to 
avoid touching upon matters purely 
medical; also I have tried to make 
distinct the limits bevond which the 
best self help would indicate that a 
physician's aid should be sought. 

The address is chiefly to women 
because they form the larger num- 
ber of sufferers from functional 
nervous disease, but in most in- 
stances if the pronouns were changed 
the lessons would apply as well to 
men. The hygiene of nervousness 
is not very different in the two sexes 
though the causes of nervousness 
may vary widely. 



PREFACE 

It is hoped that the families and 
friends of the nervous will find in 
these pages information which will 
help them materially in their rela- 
tions with the sufferers from nervous 
disorders and teach them the best 
way to help, control and comfort, it 
may be even to cure. 



CONTENTS 



I. Of Nervousness in General — Defini- 
tions of Nervousness and of the 
Nervous System — Manifestations and 
Causes of Nervousness 11 

II. Prevention and Control of Nervous 
Symptoms — Exaggerated Emotional 
Expression — How to Control One's 
Self — Importance of Habit — Of Occu- 
pation — Of Varied Interests .... 35 

III. Control of Nervousness, Continued: 

The Physical Side of It — Relaxation 
— Sleep — Causes of Poor Sleep — How 
to Form Good Habits, Physical and 
Mental — Value of System and Routine 70 

IV. Of Established Nervousness and its 

Symptoms — Loss of Appetite — Rela- 
tions of Nervousness to Food and 
Nutrition — Errors and Fancies About 
Special Diets — How to Economize 
Nervous Energy 93 

V. Of Nervousness in Children and Its 

Prevention 123 

VI. Sympathy — Its Use and Its Abuse . . 146 

VII. Religion and Nervousness — Treatment 
of Nervous Diseases by Clergy — 
Reasons for their Frequent Failure 
to Help — Emmanuel Church Move- 
ment — Truthfulness — Doctors and 
Patients — Conclusions 164 



SELF HELP 
FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

I. 

Of Nervousness in General — Definitions of Ner- 
vousness AND OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM — MANIFES- 
TATIONS and Causes of Nervousness. 

In order that it may be under- 
stood at the start what the aims of 
this little book are and its necessary 
limitations, some sort of definition 
must be made of what is meant by 
" nervousness/ ' The word is a com- 
paratively modern one and the dic- 
tionaries explain it in a manner 
scarcely more definite than its ordi- 
nary loose and vague acceptation. 
Any physician who has much to do 
with nervous people has constantly 
to ask his patients to state clearly 

what they mean by describing their 
11 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

disorder as nervousness. It is not 
only by patients that it is misapplied, 
for doctors themselves often use it so 
as to include whole classes of diseases 
to which it has only the relation of 
a symptom. The more precise sound- 
ing term neurasthenia which is some- 
times used as its equivalent is of even 
more recent coinage but it is employed 
in the same loose way. It would be 
better if " nervousness " were used 
only to describe ordinary general 
manifestations of the every-day sort 
and " neurasthenia " with its many 
complications applied to conditions 
in which the nervous symptoms 
amount to a disease, or rather a dis- 
order. 

Neurasthenia 

The neurologist has patients sent 

to him daily to whose cases, partly 
12 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

from a desire not to alarm the suf- 
ferer or the family, partly from a 
lack of exact knowledge, a label of 
11 neurasthenia " has been attached 
without any other warrant than that 
they are undoubtedly " nervous " — 
but nervous as a secondary symptom 
of other disease, nervous, mental or 
general. To quote a personal experi- 
ence, in my note-books of the past 
year are found cases described by 
the physicians referring them as 
" neurasthenias " among which are 
several varieties of insanitv, some of 
them actual wild mania, others of be- 
ginning softening of the brain, of 
melancholia, of hysteria, and not a 
few which turned out on examination 
to be well-defined forms of clearly 
marked organic disease such as can- 
cer, Bright 's disease, heart disease 
and catarrh of the intestines. " Ner- 

13 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

vous exhaustion " and " nervous pros- 
tration " are other phrases which are 
misused and misapplied. Strictly 
speaking they are more rare and 
more serious conditions and the 
words should not be used as if they 
were synonyms for mere fatigue — but 
they are constantly thus employed. 
A case of real nervous exhaustion 
may be so bad as to render the patient 
unable to exert so much nerve-force 
as is needed to walk up stairs but 
one hears a person who is merely 
rather tired and irritable announce 
with unction that he has nervous ex- 
haustion. A woman, obviously in no 
very desperate state, told me she had 
had nervous prostration. Supposing 
this had been some time since, she was 
asked how long it lasted. " Oh, I had 
it yesterday before dinner. " If she 
had not picked up this sort of half 

14 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

medical slang and had been content 
to describe the state she had been 
in " yesterday before dinner " in 
another sort of slang as " a bit 
jumpy" she would have come nearer 
to an accurate representation of her 
state. 

Definition of Nervousness 

With these reservations and excep- 
tions, let us attempt a definition of 
nervousness which shall be sufficient 
to cover such conditions as may 
afterward properly be considered in 
an untechnical way. Nervousness, 
speaking largely, is either a con- 
dition of morbid excitability of the 
nervous system or an imperfect con- 
trol by the nervous system of the 
performance of its functions, or a 
union of these two states in varying 
proportions. 

15 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

The source of such conditions in 
an individual instance may be mental 
or bodily enfeeblement from some 
cause or more rarely may arise from 
a single disturbance of the kind we 
call a ' ' shock. ' ' Usually there exists 
a combination of several causes, act- 
ing together or in succession. For 
example, a woman has to nurse in 
serious illness, for a long time, a rel- 
ative whom she loves: thus two 
causes are supplied, hard work, with 
fatigue and anxiety, and often a third 
cause is added by the necessity of the 
case making her take her meals irreg- 
ularly and hurriedly. Should she 
then have a small illness herself or 
some slight physical injury, prepared 
by her previous exhaustion and poor 
nourishment to be an easy prey, 
she falls into the grip of " nervous- 
ness." As a curious instance of 

16 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

the second kind of cause, namely a 
single shock, I recall the case of a 
robust, unimaginative young Irish- 
man who at the funeral of a relative 
slipped into the grave. He was ill 
for a year or more with every mani- 
festation of excitability, timidity, 
apprehension, indecision, tearfulness 
— a condition in fact which in a girl 
would have been described as hysteri- 
cal nervousness. 

What is the " nervous system' ' 
which seems to be the seat of such 
troubles? Another definition is here 
called for to make matters clear be- 
fore proceeding further. The brain, 
the spinal cord and the nerves that 
originate from them, together consti- 
tute the nervous system of the body. 
Higher functions are controlled by 
the brain — namelv, those acts which 
need will and nice attention, and also 

2 17 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

the purely mental operations. The 
lower, automatic or habitual, per- 
formances of our bodies are governed 
either by centres in the spinal cord 
or by nerve centres (ganglions) close- 
ly related to it. Over many such 
acts, although ordinarily they are 
done without conscious attention, the 
brain retains control or can assume 
control, so that they may be per- 
formed consciously or be altogether 
inhibited, one might say vetoed, by 
the brain. 

Some, no doubt, are born nervous 
— that is with an imperfect or one- 
sided development of the nervous 
system, which lessens its ability to 
perform its tasks. To some, nervous- 
ness comes as a result of their own 
folly, or the misconducting of their 
lives; for some it is an unavoidable 
consequence of the sins of others, or 

18 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

of bearing the burdens of others. The 
first and the last of these classes are 
the ones most in need of help and 
counsel. It is the morally and men- 
tally controllable that can be cured; 
whether the control be exercised from 
within or from without is of less 
moment than that control is possible. 
To such one may speak with some 
hope of bringing aid; to the foolish 
the tongues of men and angels alike 
cry in vain. But what is important 
to our present purpose is not the 
description of a condition which 
though difficult to define precisely is, 
nevertheless, a pretty well-recognized 
one, but the comprehension of the 
verv vital and less generallv under- 
stood fact that nervousness is a symp- 
tom, not a disease in itself * 

* I am well aware that in rare instances " nervous- 
ness " in an exact sense is so marked and serious a 
matter and other symptoms so insignificant that it 
19 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

The disease or disorder, the origi- 
nal " causing cause" of the nervous- 
ness, may be very remote, may be 
mental, moral, or physical, but to 
treat the resulting symptom with any 
fair promise of success we have to 
seek out this source of trouble and 
remove it. 

Manifestations of Nervousness 

Before w r e concern ourselves with 
how this is to be done, let us look for 
a moment at the manifestations of 
nervous disorder. What are the 
earliest recognizable signals of dan- 
ger? Perhaps the commonest early 
symptom of approaching trouble is 
the difficulty of concentrating or con- 
tinuing attention. Next as heralds, 
are apt to appear unreasonable ir- 

raay be properly considered a disorder by itself. But 
as a general rule and for such degrees of nervousness 
as can come within the scope of our consideration in 
such a book as this, the statement is true as it stands. 
20 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

ritability of temper and an impair- 
ment in the perception of the relative 
importance of things, so that trifles 
are regarded as matters of life and 
death moment, and the smallest or- 
dinary affairs of daily life present 
themselves as absolutely insupport- 
able burdens. Soon physical changes 
are perceived — tremulousness, fits of 
causeless crying, restlessness, fatigue 
upon the slightest exertion. Not to go 
on with details of what may follow, 
we may pause here a moment to con- 
sider this matter of too easy tiring — 
a highly characteristic attendant 
symptom of states of general ner- 
vousness, and one which, when thor- 
oughly comprehended, probably ex- 
plains a good deal. 

An excessive fatigue from moderate 
exertion is often found in persons 

who to all appearance are in good 
21 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

muscular condition. They can make 
strong single or brief exertions, but 
cannot continue to apply their forces. 
The weakness lies not in the muscles 
but in the nerve-centres that control 
them, which are too readily exhaust- 
ed. The essential difficulty is in the 
nutrition of these nerve-centres and 
the fatigue experienced is only a sign 
of it. If the trouble has gone so far 
as to become chronic, so that the suf- 
ferer wakes tired, gets up tired, and 
goes tired all day, something more 
serious in the wav of treatment is 
needed than can be suggested in an 
article like this, or carried out at 
home. We are to concern ourselves 
with those only who are drifting to- 
ward such conditions or affected with 
them in minor degrees. As to this 
last described condition of perpetual 
fatigue, it should be added that such a 

22 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

state is sometimes the only symptom 
of a nervous disturbance and may 
exist as a simple ' ' asthenia, ' ' a weak- 
ness, that is, without any further 
manifestations of nervousness. 

It has already been said that some 
are born nervous and some have ner- 
vousness thrust upon them. In the 
former class, education and proper 
environment in youth will do what 
can be done to prevent the develop- 
ment of trouble. The care and bring- 
ing up of children with these ten- 
dencies must be considered later. 
Let us occupy ourselves now with 
the causes producing nervousness — 
causes often avoidable or control- 
lable, could they but be recognized 
early enough. 

Causes of Nervousness 

The doctor classifies the causes of 
disease into " predisposing" and 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

" exciting " causes, phrases easily 
explained. For example, anything 
which lowers the general health will 
act as a predisposing cause of a con- 
tagious disease, while the actual ma- 
terial germ or microbe is the exciting 
cause, which, received into a body in 
poor condition, meets with little re- 
sistance to its attack and develops 
without the obstacles which strong 
vitality would place in its way. 

The predisposing causes of ner- 
vousness are of tenest mental, the ex- 
citing causes of tenest physical; but 
this is a rule with exceptions. In 
nervous disorders w r e have to reckon, 
too, with predispositions due to char- 
acter and temperament and these are 
very important. Some of the con- 
spicuous and peculiar virtues of 
woman may, if unguided and undis- 
ciplined, become sources of trouble in 

24 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

one inclined to nervousness. Her 
strong affections and sympathy lead 
her often into emotional excesses; 
her unselfishness drives her into giv- 
ing up necessary rest or sleep or 
diversion. Emotional excess, whether 
spent in grief, love, hate, or ambition, 
is the most extravagant form of ner- 
vous expenditure and, if unchecked, 
soon results in bankruptcy. 

On the other hand, the monotony 
of occupation, the lack of varied in- 
tellectual interests, the continual or 
exclusive occupation with the small 
and uninspiring details of domestic 
management which characterize the 
lives led by many women, bring about 
nervousness, or help the development 
of nervousness in a different way. A 
woman bound down to work of this 
kind grows to exaggerate the impor- 
tance of trifles, is apt to cultivate 

25 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

worries, and to end, at best, in losing 
her sense of mental and moral per- 
spective, exaggerating small faults 
of her own or others into crimes. She 
is likely, too, as happens in any one 
secluded from larger interests or 
wider contact with the world, to per- 
mit her own views and personal pecu- 
liarities to grow until they reach an 
awlrvvard size and strength and be- 
come difficult to manage. 

When such predisposing causes as 
those enumerated — emotional indul- 
gence, monotony of life, tendencies to 
worry, extravagant feelings about 
small things — have acted long enough, 
let them be followed by a sharp 
physical shock, like an acute illness, 
or a long strain of work, or, most 
potent of all, by a combination of 
mental anxiety with hard bodily 
work, such as is entailed in nursing 

26 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

some one dear to her, with the usual 
accompaniment of irregular hours, 
loss of sleep, and hasty meals at odd 
times, and we have a combination 
which will almost certainly result in 
serious nervous breakdown. 

The exciting causes of nervous- 
ness are, how r ever, often so small that 
they appear ridiculous, even impos- 
sible, to one who ignores the previous 
long preparation which made pos- 
sible the final catastrophe. If you 
stand on slippery ground at the very 
edge of a precipice, it will not take 
much of a push to send you over, nor 
will you hit any less hard on the 
rocks at the bottom because it was 
a slight shove that upset you. As 
an example, a woman getting out 
of bed stepped on a pin and was 
six months recovering from the neu- 
rasthenic condition which followed; 

27 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

but she had been ten years getting 
ready for it. Another instance re- 
cently under my observation was that 
of a lady who found the exciting 
cause of a long illness in the fact that 
her husband had insisted on buying 
for her, in preparation for a summer 
holiday, a dress which she thought 
costly beyond his means. She wor- 
ried and fretted and fussed about it 
until she ended in a state of nervous 
depression, which she was a twelve- 
month getting over. 

When some of the early premoni- 
tory symptoms of nervousness ap- 
pear, what can be done to stop their 
further increase is our next question. 
Whether they have newly taken pos- 
session of the patient or are the slow 
growth of years, the answer will be 
much the same. The differences in 
the plan of attack w 7 ill depend upon 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

whether the threats are against the 
nervous or the physical side. 

Symptoms of Nervousness 

Let us recapitulate the symptoms, 
some or all of which may occur. 
First, upon the mental side (or ner- 
vous — the nerves and the mind are 
part of one system), there have been 
mentioned irritability, a tendency 
toward emotional excess, such as too 
ready tears, too easy fatigue upon 
use of the mind, extravagant expres- 
sions of feeling about trifles, inability 
to decide small questions without un- 
duly long consideration and recon- 
sideration and difficulty in concen- 
trating thought. With or without 
these or some of them, the victim 
may observe certain physical symp- 
toms — constant fatigue or fatigue 
out of proportion to the work done, 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

tremulousness, uneasy or too brief 
sleep, general restlessness, and many 
vague pains. Both lists might be ex- 
tended to an unconscionable length 
if one tried to make them complete. 
It is, indeed, characteristic of troub- 
les of a nervous as distinguished 
from those of an organic kind, that 
they present this bewildering com- 
plexity and variety of small disorders 
of function or sensation. It is often 
on this very infinity and contradic- 
tory mingling of symptoms that the 
doctor founds his diagnosis; and 
while the patient usually insists that 
each and every one of them has its 
separate origin and needs distinct 
treatment, the physician knows w^ell 
that all are but branches from one 
root, that each physical woe, fancied 
or real, is to be traced to some wrong 
method of ordering her life and ex- 

30 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

pending her strength. It should be 
noticed, too, that all these symptoms 
are rather alterations or exaggera- 
tions of normal conditions than 
wholly abnormal manifestations, that 
is they represent disorder of func- 
tion, not disease; they are signals of 
danger, disregard of which may mean 
wreck. Like most early signs of 
disease they are natural warnings of 
something wrong. Fatigue and pain 
are usually hints for rest. That a 
broken bone hurts is not a meaning- 
less isolated fact — it is Doctor Na- 
ture's way of ordering that the in- 
jured part shall be kept still. If that 
combination of physical and mental 
equilibrium w r hich we call good tem- 
per is disturbed, the balance must be 
restored by rest, by the absence of 
strain. And so with the other altera- 
tions described, each has an appro- 

31 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

priate remedy or one would better say 
each has a cause which must be found 
and removed to allow repair or re- 
covery. 

Religion and Suggestion 

So much has of late been said about 
the cure by suggestion, by mental in- 
fluence, religious or non-religious, of 
nervous diseases that it is worth w r hile 
to call attention to and emphasize 
more strongly the share that physical 
conditions have in bringing about 
nervousness. No one except fanatics 
and ignorant enthusiasts will pre- 
tend that all physical conditions can 
be changed by mental means. If the 
contention that bodily ailments or 
deficiencies play a large part in pro- 
ducing nervousness is correct — a 
belief held by all those who have 
seen most of such disorders — it is 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

obvious that mental means of healing 
will be as insufficient against them as 
against the consequences of starva- 
tion. The analogy is indeed a very 
good one, since many times under- 
nourishment, i.e., starvation in some 
degree, of the nervous system is the 
basic difficulty. Neither belief nor 
pra}^er, suggestion, encouragement 
nor hypnotism will replace food, or 
satisfy the demands of the nerves for 
better nutrition. Faith, hope, confi- 
dence of recovery, Christian patience, 
may aid, will aid, in lessening the 
suffering, will assist the sufferer to 
bear the inevitable ills while the 
necessary help is sought, the needed 
treatment given, but they cannot by 
themselves effect the cure w r hich must 
be brought about by the common- 
place, simple, unromantic means of 
food, rest and self-control. 

3 33 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

Let whoever is beginning to find 
herself the victim of some of these 
mutinous manifestations against the 
good order and discipline of mind or 
body start without delay to do what 
is possible to remove the causes. 

How to do this will be the subject 
of the next chapter. 



II. 

Prevention and Control of Nervous Symptoms — 
Exaggerated Emotional Expression — How to 
Control One's Self — Importance of Habit — 
Of Occupation — Of Varied Interests. 

How to lessen, to control, to abolish 
if possible the causes of nervousness 
— this is the problem for solution: 
not how to lessen nervousness merely, 
for it must be repeated that that is 
mainly a symptom and only one 
symptom of a disorder of complex 
and widespread distant origin. 

Before nervousness has been estab- 
lished and become a habit is the time 
to attack it. Once it has got posses- 
sion, more severe measures must be 
taken to eject it— and advice will 
have to wait until the war is over. 
' ' To read the riot act to a mob of emo- 
tions is valueless, and he who is wise 
will choose a more wholesome hour 

35 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

for his exhortations. Before and 
after are the preacher's hopeful occa- 
sions, not the moment when excite- 
ment is at the highest and the self- 
control we seek to get help from at its 
lowest ebb." 

The woman who suffers from ner- 
vousness and wishes to control it must 
try to study for herself her life, 
habits, environment, temperament, in 
order to discover whence the trouble 
springs. Oftenest some departure 
from proper ways of physical living 
will be found to be the starting-point. 
It may have been unavoidable when 
it occurred, or have been thought so 
at least, or more likely not thought 
about at all until the mischief was 
done. 

If this be the case, the physical 
needs have to be studied and the pos- 
sible causes of trouble considered in 

36 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

turn and in their relation to the 
consequences, a feat seldom to be 
achieved for one's self, but calling 
for the wisdom of an outsider, and 
one too who has no interest or affec- 
tion involved. In the next chapter 
the needs of such conditions will be 
taken up. In this one we are to dis- 
cuss treatment of the earlier and 
more easily handled symptoms, espe- 
cially those which may be checked or 
wholly done away with by one's own 
efforts. 

Excessive Emotional Expression 

One of the most frequent predis- 
posing causes of nervousness is a 
habit of yielding too easily to the ex- 
pression of all and any emotion, or 
of cultivating to excess the outward 
manifestation of feeling. Few things 
will insure more certainly a future 

37 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

disastrous result upon the character 
than this, and yet there are many 
women who account it to themselves 
for virtue or consider it sweet and 
feminine and attractive to do so. 
Tears for trifling pains, or loud com- 
plaints about small annoyances — 
physical, social, or what not — may 
give at first momentary relief to the 
weeper, but soon grow into habits 
which weaken the power of self-con- 
trol and lessen the possibility of en- 
durance in all forms. It is not within 
the ability of every woman to sup- 
press absolutely all manifestations 
of suffering; it is surely within the 
power of every one to make up her 
mind — and to teach her children — to 
endure the smaller inevitable woes of 
existence without an outcry, and thus 
aid in the acquisition of control over 
larger forms of trouble. 

38 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

To yield and yield again to extrav- 
agant emotion is weak-minded — and 
leads to more weak-mindedness — and 
weakens bodily endurance too. Ever}^ 
one in this trouble-full world will 
some day have need of all possible 
native and acquired courage where- 
with to face an enemy, whether that 
enemy come from within or without. 
Let it be cultivated early and always. 
There can be no disaster, moral, 
physical, or financial, so great but 
that courage, reason, and the power 
to use one's head coolly will help us 
to encounter, perhaps to conquer it, 
at worst to endure it bravely. 
Whether the suffering is of mind or 
body, the one who can stand it with- 
out wasting her strength in making 
useless noise has the possibility, 
almost the certainty, of being able to 
lessen it by distracting her mind, by 

39 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

diverting her own attention and 
seizing all means to aid her in the 
struggle. 

All this must not be taken as advice 
against reasonable expression of feel- 
ing. For many people, and at some 
times for any person, to attempt the 
total suppression of all outward 
manifestation of grief, anger, or 
irritation has the same kind of unde- 
sirable result as tying down the safety 
valve of the boiler. The steam blows 
off noisily from the valve perhaps — 
but to let it do so saves it from ex- 
ploding elsewhere in a far more dan- 
gerous way. The whole American 
tendency is to over-expression of the 
most trivial feelings, or perhaps I 
should rather say, to regard trivial- 
ities as of too much importance, and 
it is not very probable that any advice 
will lead to too complete a repression 

40 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

and consequent danger of boiling over 
at the wrong time. 

Since the first publication of these 
papers a friend has written me some 
criticisms of the counsel to repress 
emotional expression, which are 
printed at the end of this chapter be- 
cause they add interesting personal 
statements about the effect of too 
great or too complete self -repression. 
But again it should be repeated that 
the reasonable expression of natural 
feelings is not what one desires to 
suppress. The advice given was 
meant for the folk w r ho cry w^hen a 
plate is broken, w r ho shriek and 
scream w^hen they are angry, weep 
copiously when the canary bird is ill, 
and go into hysterics w T hen the baby 
has stomach-ache — for those, in short, 
who indulge in orgies of emotional 
dissipation. 

41 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

Causes and Consequences of Emotion 

Lange and James have formulated 
the theory that an emotion is the re- 
sult of its appropriate physical ex- 
pression. This at first sight seems 
a mere paradox — to say for example 
that a girl is bashful because she 
blushes, that a man is afraid because 
he trembles — seems merely ridiculous 
to any one but a student of psychol- 
ogy. But not to go into the long 
argument necessary to support this 
contention, is it not true in every 
one's experience to a certain extent? 
Take as an instance the shock of fear : 
there is a momentary stop, then a 
palpitating of the heart, rapid or 
gasping breathing, chill or even 
sweating — all or some of these out- 
ward expressions of the emotion 
usually occurring before the sense of 
alarm is felt by the brain. This is 

42 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

the case with most emotions, at any 
rate with the sudden emotional dis- 
turbances, and all follow the same 
course, the perception first, "motor 
reactions" next (i.e., palpitation, 
rapid respiration, chill, etc., in the in- 
stance above), then, and not till then, 
the feeling proper to the outward 
expression. The possibility that such 
a view can be held is at least sug- 
gestive, for although we may not be 
able to control or abolish a feeling we 
can do something towards lessening 
its expression in action. 

Proof of this theory to a certain 
extent may be had by experiments 
upon one's own feelings. It is safe 
to assert that if one frowns and 
assumes an attitude of anger, a cer- 
tain sense of annoyance if not a 
stronger sensation will be experi- 
enced. Try on the other hand to put 

43 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

on a smiling expression and observe 
if a sense of pleasure or merriment 
does not follow. 

These things are capable of per- 
haps stronger demonstration if a 
hypnotized subject be used. If in a 
person in that condition one presses 
the brows into a frown, this artifi- 
cial assumption of the appearance of 
anger is apt to call forth other signs 
of that passion — showing certainly 
that the emotion corresponding to the 
expression may be produced by the 
involuntary expression in the feat- 
ures of the look and movement suit- 
able to the feeling. 

A hypnotized person, it is true, is 
morbidly accessible to suggestion — 
but so to a less degree is any one of 
sensitive nervous organization. The 
moment such a person yields to the 
outward visible expression of emotion 

44 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

it seems to re-enforce, to make less 
controllable the morbid state. To 
give way therefore upon small occa- 
sion to extravagant expression of 
feeling is to put in danger the whole 
mechanism of self-restraint. Cer- 
tainly whether the theory be true or 
not, it will be found to furnish ground 
for reasonable working practice in 
the control of excessive or abnormal 
displays of emotion. Panic terror — 
that horrible fear of the unknown, un- 
namable something, as real and as 
unreal as the night terrors of chil- 
dren, is a not uncommon symptom 
with sensitive neurasthenic patients. 
Yielding to it means that it becomes 
master and totally unfits its victim 
for normal living : fighting against it 
is difficult by reason of the very 
vagueness which makes it so terrify- 
ing. But try bluffing — put on a brave 

45 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

smiling aspect, " Assume a virtue if 
you have it not" and with every effort 
made the dragon becomes less alarm- 
ing until full control of the feeling 
has been gained. 

One important means is physical 
quiet, relaxation, not the tension of 
every muscle, which is commonly and 
wrongly held to be the way to fight 
against a hurt. Bodily relaxation is 
one step and often the most helpful 
one toward securing mental — i.e., 
nervous, ease, just as a person who 
slips and falls is less apt to be injured 
if falling relaxed. The reverse is also 
true, that bodily tension increases 
mental strain. If, for example, you 
find yourself tremulous, or with shak- 
ing hands from excitement or appre- 
hension, the tremor will be much 
more effectively overcome by relaxing 
the affected muscles, or the whole 

46 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

body, than by stiffening up and 
" bracing yourself'' against it; and 
the corresponding nervous relief is 
far greater. 

This is the attitude to be sought 
for; the philosophy of it is plain 
enough to any thinking person. If 
it is not clear to you, try the experi- 
ment a few times for yourself. The 
trick of it is not to be acquired in a 
day or week, but it can be learned, 
and should be striven for at all times 
until attained and fixed as a habit. 

Hysterics 

In hysterical attacks the method 
is still more successful — in suitable 
cases. " Hysterics" are by no means 
the exclusive prerogative of the weak 
and the silly, nor is any advice of 
much use to these classes, which need 
more active measures. But when a 

47 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

strong woman (or man for that mat- 
ter) has been brought low by disease 
and some long and heavy nervous 
strain, it is far from uncommon to 
see such a one develop old-fashioned 
" hysterics " as a result of the con- 
dition of irritable weakness to which 
the nervous svstem has been reduced. 
Even with the foolish patient, though 
advice is wasted, strict and stern com- 
mands may sometimes be heeded. 
The " motor reactions/' the outward 
and visible signs of hysteria, are 
largely in the voluntary muscles and 
consist as every one knows in convul- 
sive movements, shrieking, laughing 
or crying — and almost without excep- 
tion the attacks begin with rapid, shal- 
low breathing, often irregular or sob- 
bing in character. This is the point 
to strike at. Insist, command, deep- 
breathing, to be kept up until the re- 

48 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

laxation arrives which indicates the 
end of the seizures for the time. The 
good old prescription of a dash of 
cold water into the face or upon the 
chest of the hysteric, probably acts 
by inducing deep-breathing. Some 
attacks of hysteria are beyond such 
methods, but many will be found 
amenable to them. 

Not only pain but half the ills that 
may befall one are multiplied infi- 
nitely by expectation and attention. 
The worst part of pain is often in 
anticipation and recollection. 

Courage and Custom 

It is not always the pain itself that 
damages, but rather the consequences 
of pain; and it is against these that 
we have to provide an armor of habit, 
against these that we must make ready 
all available weapons. Pain, sorrow, 

4 49 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

trouble — are not these the lot of all? 
It is to be remembered, too, that pain 
is more necessarily part of the life 
of women than of men, many of whom 
go through a long existence without 
any serious suffering. To bear reso- 
lutely what cannot be escaped, to re- 
fuse to cease from duties or to lay 
aside one's interests at the command 
of pain will surely make it easier to 
bear, may even shorten its duration. 
It is true in the moral sphere as it 
is in the action of the body that the 
burden which, once laid down, we 
cannot lift again to our shoulders 
may be easily carried if we support 
it standing upright and moving 
steadily onward, and still better if we 
have custom to help us. 

The attitude of mind toward wor- 
ries should be something like that de- 
scribed above for the body in respect 

50 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

of bearing pain. Worries are like 
crumbs in bed — the more you wriggle 
the w r orse they scratch you! People 
with well-established nervousness 
may not be able to rid themselves 
of worries, but we are speaking now 
of the earlier stages. When a woman 
begins to find that she cannot 1 shake 
off minor cares, troubles and appre- 
hensions, it is time for action, for 
this is an almost certain indication 
of beginning trouble. Let her ex- 
amine into the matter with a little 
cool consideration. 

Analysis will often discover as the 
fundamental difficulty a sort of 
derangement of moral perspective. 
Trifles have come to occupy the fore- 
ground so completely that they ob- 
scure or altogether hide the larger 
and more important things beyond 
them. This is often because trifles do 

51 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

really and naturalty occupy too large 
a share of her daily attention. The 
application of a little reasoning 
power to the consideration of such 
matters will, if the trouble be not too 
far advanced, reduce things to some- 
thing like their proper relation. Meet 
worries with common sense: — 

" Fling but a stone, the giant dies." 

Decision 

Many nervous folk can at once for 
the time get rid of their apprehen- 
sion by telling some one, from whom 
they readily and faithfully receive 
assurance of the unimportance of 
their fears. You should try to be- 
come your own adviser in this respect 
and conscientiously take your own ad- 
vice. Learn to put yourself in a de- 
tached attitude; be watchful for the 
approach of worries, of a cause of 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

irritability or panic or groundless 
distress. Met with calmness, they 
may usually be put aside without 
affecting the nerves. If you have a 
decision to make, examine the 
grounds for it, of course, then make 
it — and stick to it when made. In the 
treatment of cases of advanced ner- 
vousness, to insist upon patients doing 
this is sometimes the only way to help 
them out of the slough in which 
they flounder, considering and recon- 
sidering troubles of no moment, — 
making a great splash, but not ad- 
vancing towards firm ground. Quite 
often no other treatment is needed 
to put an end to the difficulty. Hav- 
ing once settled a matter of small 
importance, let no temptation induce 
you to take it into your thought 
again, not even if you find or believe 
you have judged wrong. You would 

53 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

do better, under the circumstances, to 
let it go, even if it be some detriment 
to you, than to start its examination 
over again. You should not let your- 
self begin to make questions of con- 
science out of nothing any more than 
you would encourage fears of trifling 
physical dangers by dwelling upon 
them. "In counsel/' Lord Bacon 
says in one of his essays, "it is good 
to see dangers and in execution not 
to see them, except they be very 
great." 

Indecision 

When you feel these storms of 
indecision, they must be faced — not 
fled from. Consider the facts: look 
people and things squarely in the 
face. Take into consideration with- 
out flinching from them all the facts, 
good and bad. Give up something 

54 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

if you must, but remember you can- 
not both have and nQt have, cannot 
in the homely phrase l ' keep your cake 
and eat it too." Then without undue 
reconsideration select your course of 
action, and having chosen steer on 
that course no matter how the wind 
blows, even though second thought 
advise a different choice. Morally 
in such cases, a mistaken decision 
bravely held to is better than vacilla- 
tion — and it is better in the end to 
have chosen wrong than to have hesi- 
tated and run this way and that until 
no way seemed practicable. Of 
course we are speaking of choice in 
merely material matters, not of 
choice between right and wrong. 

Put away vain analysis and weak 
regret and self-reproaches as idle 
and empty follies. If you have 
decided wrong, abstain from com- 

55 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

plaint even to yourself but above all 
abstain from the relaxation of confid- 
ing your difficulties, doubts and fears 
to others. Abstain for two reasons: 
First, because such confessions will 
not as a rule help you, but rather be 
likely to suggest new doubts, and sec- 
ond because however polite and inter- 
ested your listener may seem, no one 
can really be concerned for another 
about such trivialities — and you had 
better remember beforehand that the 
hearer will be bored. 

In short again, courage is the first 
of virtues — and courage at its best is 
a solitary virtue. 

To finish the consideration of the 
symptoms threatening trouble from 
the nervous side, it may be added that 
the others in the list, namely, diffi- 
culty in concentrating attention, im- 
perfect memory, and fatigue of mind 

56 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

coming too soon upon study or in- 
tellectual effort, are matters of some- 
what greater seriousness. The suf- 
ferer from any or all of them is 
usually convinced that they represent 
permanent impairment of mind and 
often states to the physician that they 
indicate approaching insanity. This 
is not true, however ; they do indicate 
the temporary impairment of the 
brain's ability to do its work, but no 
more necessarily mean its destruction 
than a sprained ankle means that the 
leg will drop off. What they call 
loudly for is rest; and if they have 
not gone too f ar, this may be enough 
to restore the nerves to useful ac- 
tivity. In some instances to change 
the form of labor which has caused 
the fatigue will be enough ; in others 
to lessen the hours of work will 
suffice. 

57 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

These symptoms are really scarcely 
separable. They are, in fact, but 
several manifestations of one condi- 
tion. On being analyzed they will be 
found to have their basis in the lack 
of ability to hold the mind to one 
subject, a defect, that is, in power of 
attention. The subject of the moment 
not having been well grasped origi- 
nally on account of this enfeebled 
power of attention, when the effort 
to recall it is made it cannot be re- 
vived vividly or accurately. This is 
described and felt as a failure of 
memory. 

A Quiet Hour 

A wise precaution for women not 
strong, and a measure of great value 
and helpfulness for anyone who exhib- 
its tendencies to nervous breakdown 
or has cause to fear such an effect is 

58 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

to have an hour or two of absolute 
physical quiet and peace daily at a 
fixed time. It may be hard to 
arrange this but it is less troublesome 
than a long illness! Insist that be- 
tween certain hours you shall be 
totally undisturbed by visitors, ser- 
vants, household questions, or any 
need less serious than the house's 
being on fire. If you need physical 
rest, get it then; if you only w r ant 
peace and time to regain disturbed 
balance, the retirement may be made 
profitable with a book, but do not 
take this time for cleaning up neg- 
lected duties ; let it be understood and 
used as a period of freedom from 
all care. If more repose than this 
is necessary, an hour after the mid- 
day meal is a good time to choose. 
Whichever of these is done, it is most 
important that punctuality and regu- 
larity in it should be observed. 

59 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

Let it be most clearly and emphat- 
ically said that the hour thus set aside 
must not be used as a time for clear- 
ing one's desk, for finishing delayed 
work, in short for duties or labors, 
but kept sacredly for rest of body and 
mind. How best to seek such rest is 
a matter depending on the conditions 
of the person and the day. It may 
be merely physical repose that is 
needed ; it may be mental quiet with 
the assurance already insisted upon 
that no interruption wdll occur. 
Those who make a habit of this quiet 
hour as a measure of self -protection, 
even those who are not nervous, will 
find in it varied possibilities of use- 
fulness. For instance in people who 
are not of worrying disposition or 
overgiven to self -consideration, this 
undisturbed time offers opportunity 
for calm examination of one's self, 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

for arraying and judging of acts and 
motives and the settlement of the in- 
numerable insistent questions which 
must have cool and calm attention for 
their best solution. 

The Contemplative Life 

Here too lies a great opportunity 
for the cultivation of the contempla- 
tive side of life — not that hours of 
time are required for that, but that to 
have a set and certain period for con- 
templation, or for reading of a 
thoughtful or suggestive sort, is im- 
portant. It fixes a little oasis of 
calm in the mad hurry of our modern 
excited life. A book of the kind that 
conduces to or demands of one in- 
tellectual consideration, is the best 
companion whether it be poetic, phil- 
osophic or contemplative. Books 
that are good enough to bear, nay to 

61 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

beg, re-reading till they become old 
friends are the ones to choose and 
to find new helps and new r beauties at 
each reading. It is a good test of 
the quality of poetry or philosophic 
thought or wiiat may be called re- 
ligious philosophy to improve with 
repetition — a test which will be w r ell 
borne by Wordsworth or Milton's 
poetry, the works of Marcus Aurelius, 
the Imitation of Christ, William 
Penn's Fruits of Solitude — not to 
speak of such books of the Bible as 
come under our description, Job, 
Isaiah, the Psalms. 

Prevention of Nervousness 

This consideration of symptoms 
and their treatment has led us a little 
away from the main subject, the pre- 
vention of nervousness'. Enough has 
been said about the causes to suggest 
some of the remedies. 

62 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

I said that often one cause of ner- 
vousness lay in the dull mechanical 
routine of household work and man- 
agement, work unvarying in kind 
and for many people uninteresting, 
involving many small annoyances 
and constant struggle with untaught 
and unteachable servants. Since this 
cannot be done away with, every 
endeavor must be made to supply 
new interests in such lives. Accord- 
ing to age, tastes, habits, or capacity, 
these may be physical or intellectual 
occupations — or both. Active physi- 
cal exercise is a good corrective for 
ordinary nervous irritability. A 
sharp walk, moving springily, not a 
dawdle, is more advantageous in 
every way than a long dull stroll. If 
the weather is bad enough to give one 
a sense of overcoming opposition in 
facing wind and rain, so much the 

63 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

better. If for any reason you can- 
not get out, open a window and do 
ten minutes of quick active gymnastic 
movements w T ith full breathing, in the 
freshest air available. It does not 
much matter w T hat the motions are, 
so that they be rapid and use a 
variety of muscles. 

To acquire an interesting hobby or 
two and to ride them pretty hard is 
another and more lasting form of 
help. To raise chickens and pigeons 
may be made amusing and profitable, 
if you raise good ones of known and 
valued breeds. The supply of guinea- 
pigs is never equal to the demand! 
To make your own garden is a de- 
lightful occupation, but do not let it 
be a mere matter of seeding and 
weeding. Try for the finest flowers, 
or by selection and breeding to fix a 
new color in a familiar flower, or 

64 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

study cross-fertilizing of plants. The 
other day a charming lady told me 
that no hand but her own had touched 
her garden for two years except for 
the spring digging and that she had 
hybridized two thousand carnations 
in the previous season. 

The immense interest of a camera, 
well used, and the fascination of 
developing and printing your own 
negatives, every one will admit who 
has experienced it. Here again more 
is to be had out of it by studying new 
methods of doing old things, or find- 
ing things altogether new to do, than 
by pursuing worn paths. Interest 
will soon be lost if you limit your 
efforts to the usual caricatures of 
your friends — but think what endless 
opportunities may be found in the 
flowers by the wayside. A series of 
pictures of a plant or a tree at inter- 

5 65 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

vals of a week from the bare branches 
of spring through leaf -making, blos- 
som-time and fruitage to the splen- 
did death of autumn, would make 
occupation for a whole season. The 
bicycle, golf, tennis, and all the range 
of field-sports, of course suggest 
themselves, but these class rather as 
diversions than occupations. Their 
place in the cultivation of the body 
cannot be discussed here, though we 
must turn next to the physical means 
of preventing nervousness. 

The strongest are the least nervous : 
a nervous system well fed with good 
red blood is little liable to suffer seri- 
ously from any but the worst and 
most unavoidable causes of nervous- 
ness. If a person's tendencies by 
temperament or inheritance are 
tow r ard nervousness, then to be well 
fed, at regular hours, to sleep suffi- 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

ciently, to take a daily cold bath, to 
get enough active exercise in the open 
air — if possible in a form which will 
add interest to the mere exertion — 
these should be the commandments 
of the physical law. 

About the moral aspects I seem 
already to have said so much, I am 
ashamed to repeat my counsels. 
Recognize early and suppress extrav- 
agant feelings about trifles; discour- 
age undue expression of emotions of 
all kinds; meet worries tranquilly; 
make decisions without over-consid- 
eration ; and remember that although 
you must to some extent be examining 
yourself to do these things success- 
fully, you must most of all and always 
not get too much wrapped up in your 
symptoms. 

These are commonplace counsels, 
are they not ? Perhaps they are — but 
do you follow them % 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

Note. — On page 42 it was said that a friend and 
former patient had written some criticisms of my 
advice against too free expression of feelings. This 
letter is so interesting that it is here added almost 
in full. 

" While reading your papers on * Self Help for 
Nervous Women/ a few thoughts were suggested to 
me which might be of use to a class of women of 
whom you do not speak. I mean that class who do 
not give way to their feelings enough, women to 
whom it would be a relief if they could give way to 
them, but long repression of all outward expression 
has made this impossible. If tears have ever come 
to their relief, they have been tears of blood. Girls 
who have been brought up on Quaker or Puritan plan 
too early learn to control their emotions and even 
to feel a certain pride in never allowing any one to 
have a suspicion of what they are suffering. An 
almost perfect control of feature even is acquired 
more or less unconsciously. I speak feelingly, being 
myself one of these unfortunates who have suffered in 
silence all my life until I broke down under the 
strain. At rare times they can express their feelings, 
but generally they find it impossible although they 
would give worlds to be able to utter their thoughts, 
and as to tears — I can best describe by Mrs. Brown- 
ing's lines what they suffer: 

1 Go weep for those whose eyes are dry 
What time their hearts have bled/ 

" For this habit of unnatural repression Nature 
must take her revenge sooner or later and a time 
comes when these strong self-controlled women find 
their emotions will no longer be controlled. There 
must be an outlet. Happy are they if they have 
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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

been wisely brought up and taught to look at life 
as Marcus Aurelius did, or, still better, if they are 
strong church-women, who can derive comfort from 
the practice of their duties. If a girl's religious 
training has been based upon * Line upon Line,' 
1 Precept upon Precept/ Watt's Hymns, Hannah 
More, Mrs. Barbauld and Maria Edgeworth, in other 
words, the old-fashioned plan, a stronger moral than 
religious feeling has been developed, and unless 
brought up in a Church where there is some outward 
expression of religious feeling, her emotions find no 
vent. 

" Too much self-control leads to as disastrous 
results as too little, but there is more hope of recov- 
ery in the former case because the power of self- 
control can be reestablished more easily in later life 
than gained for the first time. A complete breakdown 
is, however, almost the only hope in such cases. 

"As to the means of the prevention of such 
wrecks : Avoid unnecessary self-control ; give way 
to natural emotions; accept sympathy; do not feel 
pride in bearing troubles without human help; 
accepted sympathy helps others as well as yourself — 
* whose hearts have bled what time their eyes were 
dry.' Tears are natural — it is false shame to mind 
giving way to them at proper times. They relieve 
nervous tension. A time comes when one would 
give her right hand to be able to express her feelings 
or seek sympathy." 



III. 

Control of Nervousness, Continued: The Physi- 
cal Side of It — Relaxation — Sleep — Causes of 
Poos Sleep — How to Form Good Habits, Physi- 
cal AND MENTAIi — VALUE OF SYSTEM AND 

Routine. 

In the previous chapters were con- 
sidered the common causes of ner- 
vousness in women, apart from the 
well-known and scarcely avoidable 
ones of purely physical origin, such 
as acute illness and those which may 
be described as plain foolishness. 
The former kind is impossible to con- 
sider in a popular article and to dis- 
cuss the latter would be waste of 
time. 

For the overcoming or prevention 
of nervousness the sum of the advice 
given may be repeated: the cultiva- 
tion of self-control, a wholesome 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

regularity of physical life, and a 
reasonable variety of intellectual 
interests. 

Physical Causes of Nervousness 

Some further expansion of these 
statements will perhaps be helpful. 
It will be observed that no mention 
has been made of nervousness from 
sheer hard work, mental or bodily. 
It has, however, been implied at least 
that this should not be a cause if the 
general methods of life are sound 
and that overwork is seldom a cause 
alone, but only w r hen it is combined 
with some form of mental strain, 
anxiety, hurry or worry, or when the 
ability to bear the mere physical bur- 
den is impaired by bad food, insuffi- 
cient sleep, want of exercise, or the 
like, — in short, by bad hygienic con- 
ditions. As a matter of fact, it is 

71 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

excessively rare to see nervous break- 
down as a result of what may be 
called uncomplicated hard work. 
Hard work is not such a killing mat- 
ter, but work and worry make a 
deadly combination. Another fre- 
quent cause, commoner perhaps in 
men than in women, is trying to do 
too many widely different things, to 
be officer, manager, director, trustee 
and partner in a dozen different soci- 
eties, corporations and institutions. 
With women, there will be besides 
the business of the household and 
children, half a score of committees 
for altering the world in various 
ways, church work, and so on — and 
very probably social duties of an ex- 
acting kind to be added. The final 
disaster comes when just one small 
straw more is added to the burden — 
and great is the wreck thereof. Nor 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

is nervousness, as some think, the 
privilege of the well-to-do. Any 
physician in the way of seeing many 
nervous cases will tell you his hos- 
pital wards are full of women of the 
class of the wage-earners, mill-hands, 
seamstresses, maid-servants, and that 
he cares annually for large numbers 
of clerks, stenographers and above 
all, of teachers, victims of that most 
nerve-wrecking of all forms of work. 

Economy of Exertion 

Having added these causes to our 
lists, let us return to the question of 
prevention, which also needs some 
further elucidation. In a former 
chapter a good deal was said of the 
use and value of rest. Much more 
might be written upon this text. The 
term may well be extended for our 
purposes to include not only repose, 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

but the economy of exertion in all 
kinds of ways — how to spare one's 
self, in short. Any one who is ner- 
vous should be as careful how she ex- 
pends energy, as, if she were poor 
in purse, she would be about getting 
her money's worth in what she buys. 
To rest should not be an art difficult 
of acquirement or one needing a 
teacher — yet many know very little 
of it. If you are physically tired, a 
very few minutes flat on your back 
is worth, as a means of repair, an 
hour's sitting in a chair; but mind 
that it be flat, not reclining on a 
lounge, or with your spine bent out 
of shape in a deep chair in which 
your weight rests on any part of your 
body except the parts intended to sup- 
port it — above all, not in a rocking 
chair, that special trap for the ner- 
vous. Besides getting into this posi- 

74 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

tion you must lie still in it, not hold- 
ing yourself down on a couch or 
endeavoring to hold that article of 
furniture down — that is, you must 
be loose, relaxed, unstrung. Look at 
a child in bed, limbs sprawled all 
abroad, for "how to do it" — the ease 
of the careless position is more char- 
acteristic of perfect relaxation than 
the more composed attitude of a 
sleeping adult. 

When you are asleep, it is to be 
hoped that you are still. Few people 
are when they are awake. If one 
observes the crowd in the streets, it 
is curious and most disagreeable to 
see how small the number is who are 
not constantly making grimaces and 
working their faces or jaws in some 
manner. I have heard it said that 
it was bashfulness that caused this, 
but it has not been my observation 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

that bashfulness was so widely dis- 
tributed an American trait; besides, 
how does twisting the face help to 
" keep one in countenance "? No, it 
is not bashfulness; it is misdirected 
nervous energy, which should be aid- 
ing the movements . of their legs or 
stored up somewhere in the general 
nervous reservoirs for future use. 

Bodily Relaxation 

Learn to keep still when you rest ; 
when you move, move with the part 
of the body needed ; do not waste your 
force by walking with your arms and 
face as well as your legs. If circum- 
stances force an unusual and fatig- 
uing amount of exertion upon you, 
break it now and then by periods of 
absolute rest. No matter how brief 
they are, they will be useful if you 
make them complete and perfect in 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

the way described. This is true of 
mental as well as bodily exertion. A 
minute or two of quiet, with closed 
eyes if possible, with your tension re- 
laxed and the gearing of the machin- 
ery thrown off for the moment, will 
help and refresh you greatly. Here, 
again, more may be gained if the 
ability to relax mentally can be se- 
cured, in a fashion similar to the 
withdrawing of muscular tension. 
Learn to empty your mind when not 
using it. The importance of keep- 
ing down this attitude of tension, mis- 
directed nerve activity, unintended 
and useless muscular contraction, 
lies, not in the waste of mechanical 
energy involved, but as Professor 
James says in his Talks to Students, 
in the " effects on the over-contracted 
person's spiritual life. . . . For 
by the sensations that so incessantly 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

pour in the over-tense and excited 
habit of mind is kept up: and the 
sultry, threatening, exhausting thun- 
derous inner atmosphere never quite 
clears away. If you never quite give 
yourself up to the chair you sit in, 
but always keep your leg — and body 
— muscles half contracted for a rise : 
if you breathe eighteen or nineteen 
instead of sixteen times a minute, and 
never quite breathe out at that — what 
mental mood can you be in but one 
of inner panting and expectancy and 
how can the future and its worries 
possibly forsake your mind?" 

The cultivation of this habit of re- 
laxation and of economical use of 
nerve and muscle will not only help 
for the purpose of temporary repose, 
but may be made useful in bringing 
about sleep. Both can be acquired 
and made habitual. You will then be 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

less liable to have your day's work 
or worry pursue you to bed and 
fasten upon you, to the banishing of 
all possibility of going to sleep, or if 
you escape this, follow you into the 
land of Nod and hag-ride you in 
j^our dreams. Napoleon I is perhaps 
hardly to be held up as an ensample 
of conduct — but his appetite for work 
was enormous, his power of concen- 
tration well in hand, ready for use 
at any moment, and he could always 
sleep, no matter what his troubles or 
anxieties. O'Meara quotes Napoleon 
as saying about this last faculty that 
all subjects were arranged in his 
mind like drawers in a cabinet, and 
when he had done with one he closed 
the drawer, and would as soon expect 
the drawer of his desk to open itself 
as any subject he was done consider- 
ing to turn up in his mind again or 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

to follow him to bed and prevent his 
sleeping. 

Sleep 

A treatise of some size might be 
written on how to go to sleep — and 
how not to go to sleep! As a rule, 
it is when one is over-fatigued, espe- 
cially nervously, that the anxieties of 
the day torment one at night. A per- 
son troubled this way must make 
every effort to save fatigue. "But," 
they say, "how are w r e to know what 
will fatigue us? By the time we 
know 7 we are tired, the mischief is 
done." The excuse should not be 
allowed to serve more than once. The 
second time the exertion must be well 
within the amount which before pro- 
duced exhaustion. Moreover, every 
one, especially those who are not 
strong, should know 7 how much he or 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

she can do — and stop before tlie dan- 
ger point is reached. What is the 
point where fatigue becomes undue, 
excessive, perhaps dangerous I There 
is one fairly exact measure of unwise 
exertion. If the sense of fatigue does 
not pass off quickly with reasonable 
rest — then the amount of work per- 
formed has been too great. Such a 
limitation, of course, is not needed for 
persons in good health who seldom 
overstrain the system beyond a point 
which may be regained by a good 
night's refreshing rest. 

Over-anxiety about sleep hinders 
its coming, too — and makes one wake- 
ful. Muscular relaxation and a mind 
emptied of thought are the prelimi- 
nary requisites. It may be worth 
while to add that while we know very 
little of the physiology of sleep, it is 
pretty certain that the amount of 

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blood in the brain is lessened during 
sleep, though whether this diminution 
in the blood supply is preliminary 
to or consequent upon sleep is unsure. 
On the other hand, thinking, or the 
active use of the mind, certainly in- 
creases the amount of blood in the 
head. The ordinary household rem- 
edies for wakefulness are founded on 
these facts — a hot foot-bath, a hot 
water bag to the body, a warm drink 
which draws the blood to the stomach, 
all having more or less directly the 
effect of reducing the quantity of 
blood in the head. Almost all sleep- 
producing medicines act in the same 
manner, but these are undesirable for 
nervous people who too easily grow 
dependent upon them. The habit of 
their use is not so dangerous as the 
slavery to pain-suppressing drugs, 
the greatest reason against the former 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

being rather in their somewhat de- 
pressing nervous and physical after 
effects. 

Mental Relaxation 

Though the habit of muscular re- 
laxation may be acquired by practice, 
the ability to relax or to empty the 
mind, to stop its involuntary activity, 
is less easy. One has to enforce upon 
one's consciousness the fact that 
nothing can be gained by reconsidera- 
tion of the sins of omission or com- 
mission in the hours past, or at least 
nothing so valuable that it should be 
allowed to lessen the period of needed 
rest. It is impossible for any one to 
say to himself, ' ' I will not think. No 
troubles of the day shall stay with 
me at night. ' ' If Napoleon succeeded 
in keeping them away it was more a 
matter of temperament than effort of 
will. What one can do is to replace 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

the active labor of the mind with 
peaceful contemplations, to turn 
thought into different channels. 
Sometimes this is best accomplished 
by physical means such as have been 
described, sometimes by fixing the 
attention on simple calculations or 
merely idle but pleasant notions. 
Many active-minded people of intel- 
lectual habit find a dose of light liter- 
ature a useful means for altering the 
current in which thought has been 
running and read poetry or fiction 
before bedtime, or even, though this 
seems to be considered almost crimi- 
nal by old-fashioned folk, after going 
to bed. In doing this one has to be 
careful not to get so interested that 
he keeps awake to read. 

Another common difficulty is wak- 
ing from sleep too early. This may 
mean only that the period of sleep 

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has been sufficient, but if this seems 
not to be the case, or if the moment 
you have awakened all sorts of prob- 
lems, mostly disagreeable, seize upon 
you and prevent your resting, some 
of the methods suggested for helping 
one to sleep at night may be tried, 
relaxation, fixing the mind on va- 
cancy, or the taking of food. Of 
course the hours before the activities 
of the household have begun are not 
the best time to get food — but a glass 
of milk may be left ready over- 
night in a cooler and even a glass of 
water will often be sufficient. 

It seems to be in these intervals 
between sleep and w r aking, the prae- 
dormitium and post-dormitium, al- 
though one has not quite gone to 
sleep in the former and not quite 
waked up in the latter, that one's 
fancies agreeable or disagreeable are 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

apt to run away with one and chil- 
dren particularly are often the vic- 
tims of hallucinations or seized with 
little crises of alarm during these 
times when voluntary control is at its 
lowest point, when, as one might say, 
the police of the mind are least 
vigilant. 

Amount of Sleep 

It may be added here that there is 
a good deal of nonsense talked about 
sleep and most people consider more 
sleep is required than is really neces- 
sary for the purposes of repair of the 
day's waste of tissue. Some individ- 
uals need more than others; young 
folk during the period of growth, 
and, therefore, of the greatest physi- 
ologic activity need more than the 
mature, — but habit enters largely in- 
to these requirements also. A person 
who is making neither very great 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

physical nor very great mental exer- 
tion does not need so much sleep as 
a hard-working man. If sleep be 
sound and quiet, less hours of it will 
suffice than if it be broken. If one 
cannot sleep then to rest calmly is the 
next best thing. 

Habits 

The study of how to economize 
physical exertion by proper times 
and methods of rest, by not using 
muscles not needed for the act being 
performed, leads to a further piece 
of advice founded on physiologic 
facts, and having bearings on both 
nervous and bodily effort. Habits 
are readily acquired, only too readily 
sometimes, but it is fortunately just 
as easy to acquire good habits as bad 
ones. A habit may be defined as the 
result of efforts mental or physical, 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

which have been repeated so often 
that they have become automatic — 
that is, are performed without con- 
scious willing. This state is brought 
about by the tendency of nerve-force 
to transmit itself along the most used 
ways, to follow, as physical forces do, 
the paths of least resistance. A 
child's first attempts at walking are 
wholly conscious efforts and require 
concentrated attention. The grown 
person walks automatically and so 
it is with hundreds of other things we 
do daily. If you increase the number 
of things done automatically, you de- 
crease by just so much the demands 
upon the higher nerve-centres which 
control effort. Any one who doubts 
this or who wishes to prove how much 
more wearying conscious effort is 
than the automatic performance of 
the same amount of work, has only 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

to try a short walk or go up stairs 
with voluntary careful attention to 
the completion of each muscular 
movement required. A short flight 
of steps, or a couple of hundred yards 
of distance covered thus, will produce 
a distinct sense of fatigue in the 
muscles of the whole lower half of the 
body. 

Punctuality 

Make as many of the things you 
have to do automatic by repetition as 
possible, thus relieving the control- 
ling centres of some of their duties, 
and giving more ability and oppor- 
tunity for the performance of higher 
functions. For example, mere punc- 
tuality in the matter of doing minor 
things, such, let us say, as household 
duties, — relieves you of one form of 
worriment. You will no longer find 
it necessary to discuss with yourself 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

when you shall do this or that; the 
time is fixed. The habit will soon be- 
come fastened upon you. A some- 
what rigid punctuality has, too, an 
effect in improving the balance of 
nervous people for good in a way and 
to an extent not easy to account for. 

System 

To make your necessary duties and 
work as systematic as possible is an 
approach to performing them auto- 
matically and saves small anxieties, 
does away with the constant making 
of decisions, and the over considera- 
tion of trifles. By advising system I 
do not mean to recommend that sort 
of craze for orderliness which so 
often defeats itself and causes more 
trouble than it brings help. Women 
only too often think tidiness is good 
order, and in obedience to this idea 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

put things away so carefully that 
they cannot be found when wanted, 
while they condemn the orderly dis- 
order of a man's work-room or desk 
where everything wanted is instantly 
accessible. 

System is what is wanted, a meth- 
odical, planned system, elastic enough 
to be livable, and yet exact enough 
to hold one to the performance of cer- 
tain duties at certain stated times. 
Hours for rest, hours for leisure, 
hours for pleasure, must enter into 
such a schedule as well as appoint- 
ments for work and food and duty. 
Rise at a certain time, have meals 
punctually; if you go out, go with 
a list of what you intend to do in 
the order in which you mean to do 
it. Then you will not need to worry 
at having forgotten something and 
have to go over the same ground 
again. Insist that business whether 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

domestic or other, be limited to stated 
times. If you can fix the hours at 
which you will see friends so as not 
to break into your settled routine at 
unsuitable seasons, this wdll save you 
much annoyance. In sending conva- 
lescents home after treatment, they 
say that to have this last point in- 
sisted upon and backed up by the 
physician's authority is a great help. 
All this advice about the manage- 
ment of life in minor matters is 
needed, because it cannot be too often 
repeated that it is the little troubles of 
life that cause the most breakdowns, 
not the great hurts or efforts. A 
hundred small anxieties or worries 
are like so much sand in the axles, 
and far more dangerous and damag- 
ing than is the one big stone which 
the wheels bump over somehow, 
roughly perhaps, but successfully. 

92 



IV. 

Of Established Nervousness and its Symptoms — 
Loss of Appetite — Relations of Nervousness 
to Food and Nutrition — Errors and Fancies 
About Special Diets — How to Economize Ner- 
vous Energy. 

It is evident that much of the 
advice already given to those with 
tendencies to nervousness will apply 
with still greater force to the sufferer 
from established nervousness: the 
value of system and regularity of 
life, rational activity of mind and 
body, wholesome and sufficient food 
and sleep, the avoidance of causes of 
nervous irritation and of excessive 
emotion. 

One patient will tell you when you 
thus counsel her that this formula 
begs the question, for her trouble is 
that she is unable to be systematic or 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

regular because she cannot decide on 
a course of action or follow it out if 
she does decide; that exertion, men- 
tal or physical, is impossible because 
it is so deadly fatiguing; that she 
cannot take food because she has no 
appetite or because she has indiges- 
tion; that she sleeps badly and wor- 
ries over everything, but especially 
trifles, and is extravagantly emo- 
tional. 

Another sufferer will answer a 
little differently, asserting that she 
does lead a regular life and avoids 
nervous irritation yet gets no help 
from it. Very likely this is true as 
she sees it, but what does she under- 
stand by a regular life ? and how does 
she avoid causes of worry? The 
chances are strong that if she has 
arranged her system according to her 
own ideas, it is altogether a wrong 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

one and with the self-indulgence of 
the nervous invalid she has inter- 
preted avoidance of worry to mean 
avoiding all exertion of mind and 
body, the shifting of every burden to 
other shoulders — a course well calcu- 
lated further to enfeeble a moral 
fibre already weakened. 

There are some victims of ner- 
vousness too ill to undertake the 
regulation and management of their 
lives in the way we are discussing, 
of course, and such cases should be 
in the hands of a physician. 

If, however, things are not so bad 
as to make this imperative and if the 
victim is an intelligent woman with 
some real comprehension of her con- 
dition and has retained some rem- 
nants of self-control, she may yet be 
able to help herself effectively. Let 
the case as stated be accepted as 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

genuine: the patient cannot decide 
on nor bring to a satisfactory ending 
any desired action, or feels as if she 
cannot, which amounts for our pres- 
ent purpose to the same thing: can- 
not exert herself, eats too little, sleeps 
ill, goes in constant apprehension of 
she knows not what, is full of worry 
in anticipation and regret in retro- 
spection, is emotional and always 
tired. Nothing interests her, friends, 
household, books, amusements, her 
usual occupations, all fail to do any- 
thing except add to her fatigue. In 
fact, the only things in the world that 
do concern her are herself and her 
symptoms, or rather herself as a sub- 
ject of symptoms. 

Schedule of Work 

What shall she do to lessen this sad 
catalogue of troubles and where must 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

she begin? First, some exact meas- 
ure must be had of her real physical 
strength : if she is one of the invalids 
who can do things when they want 
to, though she may suffer from exces- 
sive fatigue afterward, (which she 
will probably call " collapse, " with 
the characteristic exaggeration of her 
kind) let a schedule be laid out with 
a prescribed minimum and maximum 
amount of exertion ordered daily. 
This is best done for her by some one 
else, of course with due regard to her 
tastes, possibilities of accomplish- 
ment, her habits and those of her 
household: this " day's order" should 
include hours for work, rest, diver- 
sion and should set down absolute 
limits beyond which she should not 
go in the way of exertion and below 
which she must not fall. This will 
settle the matter of punctuality and 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

regularity and remove at once almost 
all making of decisions. The sched- 
ule should not be the same for every 
day and must have a moderate degree 
of elasticity with some alternative 
possibilities to suit changes of 
weather and the like : but outside this, 
at first at any rate no choice of hours 
or occupations should be given, all be- 
ing strictly prescribed. Here, with a 
certain kind of person, will begin the 
difficulty. This particular variety of 
patient will fuss over the anti-fuss- 
ing schedule, worry lest she should 
forget things at their proper hours, 
and fret for fear she may have neg- 
lected to do something at the moment 
ordered. There is only one cure for 
such a patient ; a strict, sensible com- 
panion or nurse with full authority, 
and made, as nurses for nervous pa- 
tients ought to be, of what mechanics 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

call anti-friction metal. Put the list 
of hours and doings into her hands, 
and let it be carried out exactly and 
without consultation with the patient 
— if possible without the patient's 
knowledge of what the scheduled 
occupations are. Such a case as this 
will probably need to be under a 
physician's care, and, having sent her 
there, we will return to our nervous 
wreck who is trying to care for her- 
self, and take up the next point in 
the list, activity. Perhaps she is 
right and exertion is impossible for 
her unless at too great cost. In that 
event, she, too, should be under a doc- 
tor, and she may be dismissed to the 
same hospital with the last patient. 
But if this assertion is only partly 
true and some activity remains pos- 
sible, let the amount be exactly meted 
out in the schedule and the minimum 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

dose having been once established, let 
it be taken daily, if it is only a few 
minutes' walk or a short drive. Do 
not try to increase this quantity for 
some time. Mental exertion, if found 
exhausting, should be given in small 
doses in the same way. 

I have sometimes found it neces- 
sary to see a patient in such a frame 
of mind as this daily for weeks and 
to set down a written list for the day 
in detail. She must report at each 
visit how successful her accomplish- 
ment of the things ordered has been 
the day before and receive, besides 
the schedule, criticism or reproof, en- 
couragement or admonition and occa- 
sional small doses of praise when it 
seems really deserved — a valuable 
medicine when cautiously adminis- 
tered. At first these patients come 

full of excuses for failure, with excel- 
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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

lent reasons to offer why they have 
not lived up to the orders pointing out 
how r impossible it is for them to do 
things in such ways — it might be 
feasible for some, but with their tem- 
perament and their physical condi- 
tion, it ought not to be asked or ex- 
pected of them. One repeats over 
and over until it finally penetrates 
through the thick armor of self -con- 
sciousness and self-consideration 
with which they are defended, that 
the things advised can be done, must 
be done, and little by little attains 
one's end. After awhile, often weeks, 
the excuses and evasions are less fre- 
quently offered or are offered with 
apologies and presently the patient 
finds herself doing all she said she 
could not do and, what is much more 
vital, begins to recognize the false- 
ness of the formerly all-sufficient 
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arguments she had pleaded to secure 
mitigation or alteration in the phy- 
sician's judgment. Once this much 
gain has been made, the pathway to 
improvement is smooth and easy. 

Appetite 

Next as to the terrible question of 
food. Nervous absence of appetite is 
a very common symptom. If the 
difficulty is no greater than this, it 
must be overcome by steady effort, 
taking definite quantities at regular 
intervals, whether wanted or not, 
whether liked or disliked, gradually 
adding to the amount. If there is 
real indigestion, that is a different 
matter, and for this again the patient 
will have to be referred to the doc- 
tor ; but the two symptoms should not 
be confused; distaste for food, even 

discomfort on taking food, does not 
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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

necessarily mean indigestion. It may 
be merely that a stomach long unused 
to the regular exercise of all its func- 
tions is discontented at being asked 
to work, or unready for work. All 
our organs form habits easily, the 
stomach most easily of any. If it is 
certain that only a rebellion is to be 
dealt with, it should be handled as 
in the former case by repeated and 
regular efforts to take food in mod- 
erate quantities without regard to the 
lack of desire for it. 

Without food there can be no per- 
manent gain of strength: tonics can- 
not replace it, nor apothecary's stuff 
be substituted for it, except for a 
short period in an emergency. The 
habit of abstaining from food is a 
very difficult one to break in hysterical 
or nervous invalids and often cour- 
ageous and persistent effort will be 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

required to overcome it. Appetite 
comes with eating, the French prov- 
erb says, but sometimes it is a long 
time coming; meanwhile the patient 
must go on eating ! One sees extraor- 
dinary instances of long-continued 
fasting, where the idea of the impossi- 
bility of taking food has become 
thoroughly ingrained and the patient 
in consequence reaches the verge of 
death by starvation; some instances 
have occurred where a craze for 
notoriety or a religious delusion has 
supplied a motive powerful enough to 
cause a wretched girl to go without 
food until death actually resulted. 

To state scientific facts concisely 
and exactly without technical terms 
is extremely difficult ; one is forced to 
use words and phrases which merely 
more or less well represent matters 
that can be briefly and precisely told 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

only in technical language. Scien- 
tific men are accused of wilfully ob- 
scuring their thoughts because they 
choose to express them in a language 
of world-wdde acceptability; it is as 
if a mechanic should be found fault 
with for preferring to measure with a 
steel tape rather than by the length 
of his thumb or the breadth of his 
hand. With this preliminary excuse 
in case any scientific person should 
condescend upon the perusal of this 
chapter and fall foul of its statements 
as inaccurate, let me endeavor to 
point out some of the reasons why so 
much stress has been laid upon the 
matter of feeding the nervously weak. 

Fatigue Symptoms 

The nervous system is the most 
complex, the latest developed and 
probably the most unstable portion 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

of the human economy. Its tissue 
elements are consumed in performing 
their functions to a greater degree 
than the cellular tissues of other 
parts of the body. In an extraor- 
dinarily interesting series of observa- 
tions Doctor Hodges, of Clark Uni- 
versity, studying with the microscope 
the nervous centres, first of honey- 
bees, later of other small animals, 
found a difference so great between 
the central nerve-cells of creatures 
in an unfatigued state and those of 
animals of the same species which 
had been working hard, that he could 
state with accuracy whether the speci- 
mens shown him w r ere taken, for ex- 
ample, from a bee on leaving a hive 
in the morning, or from one return- 
ing at night after hours of labor. It 
is at least probable that in human 
beings who suffer with the constant 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

feeling of fatigue so graphically de- 
scribed by nervous patients, there is 
a chronic condition of the nerve-cells 
resembling that of the centres in the 
tired bees. Rest will restore them to 
a certain extent, but the material for 
repair must come from the other tis- 
sues, chiefly from the blood, and these 
must be supplied with this material 
by food. If food is not taken in 
quantity sufficient to make good the 
loss then other tissues are depleted, 
weakened, starved, to nourish the 
nervous system, and a reacting effect 
follows which further injures the en- 
feebled nerves. 

Malnutrition a Source 

It may fairly be argued that almost 
all nervous diseases, even including 
those in which there is organic altera- 
tion in the nerve elements, are f unda- 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

mentally due to some form of impair- 
ment of nutrition. The statement is 
a sweeping one, and would be hard to 
justify without being over-technical, 
but when one considers in how many 
ways impaired nutrition may be 
brought about, it is not so wild as it 
looks at first sight. There may be fail- 
ure to get enough to eat, or there may 
be enough, but not of the right sort; 
the organs of digestion may be at 
fault, so that the material taken is not 
well prepared for absorption or well 
assimilated, and from any or all of 
these causes there may follow a weak- 
ening of the natural resistance to 
disease and to many substances that 
under ordinary conditions of health 
have no bad effect, but which when 
resistance is thus lowered become 
actively injurious. 



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Peculiar Food 

At this point some further digres- 
sion may be allowed on food and feed- 
ing, especially in view of the wide- 
spread superstitions current on these 
subjects, some the result of misinter- 
pretations of physiologic facts, some 
due to misrepresentations by persons 
interested in promoting the use of 
some particular kind of universally 
desirable food-stuff, some due to the 
honest noisy ignorance of half -edu- 
cated fanatics. 

There are no such things as " nerve 
foods" or "brain foods": the nerves 
depend for their nutrition, as was 
said a little way back, on material 
supplied them by the other tissues, of 
which the blood is the most important 
source, the nerves having no oppor- 
tunity to select or reject, nor indeed 



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any physiologic means of making 
such choice. There is, therefore, no 
possibility of feeding the nerves 
separately from the rest of the body 
by selected diets any more than there 
is of feeding the fingers or toes 
separately. 

Whether foods affect the nerves 
evilly or wholesomely depends pri- 
marily on the effect of such foods 
on other organs, the stomach, intes- 
tines, liver or blood-making organs. 
Curiously enough, while certain poi- 
sons have distinct selective actions on 
the nerves, lead, arsenic and mercury, 
for example, no food is known to have 
any such special influence. The old 
belief still widely held that phos- 
phorus is a brain-food is founded on a 
misunderstanding of a statement of 
Professor Agassiz's. 



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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

Fallacies of Diet 

Special diets, particularly if they 
are of narrow range and small 
variety, are to be distrusted for any 
use. For instance, an exclusive meat- 
diet, once a popular cure-all, is use- 
ful in rare instances if controlled and 
not too long continued. An exclu- 
sively vegetable diet offers a much 
wider range of food-stuffs, chemi- 
cally considered, than a diet of meat 
alone, and when the professed vege- 
tarian is advocating or using it, it 
generally includes the essentials of 
animal food by taking into its em- 
brace and into the stomachs of its 
adherents, butter, eggs and milk. A 
fancy for living altogether on raw 
food is one of the latest crazes of this 
kind but hardly needs to be seriously 
considered. 



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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

An innumerable array of patent 
breakfast foods, each the sole and 
only means of salvation and all 
founded on the solid rocks of wheat 
and oats with an occasional hint of 
rice, are loud enough in their claims 
to require some notice. They are al- 
most all good enough if one does not 
allow one's self to be scolded and 
bullied by advertisements into tak- 
ing them in too large quantities or 
to the exclusion from one's food list 
of more needed elements. Oatmeal 
porridge did not make Scotland a 
great nation. The Scots are a strong 
race who could rise superior even to 
a diet of oatmeal. The Japanese have 
done things, not because they lived 
on rice, as some using a common 
logical fallacy as an argument would 
have us believe, but in spite of living 

on rice. 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

Man Omnivorous 

To sum the matter up, there is 
every reason to believe that man was 
intended to be omnivorous, that is to 
used a mixed diet. His teeth and all 
his internal arrangements bear wit- 
ness to this, not to mention his habits, 
of which we have sufficient evidence 
covering many thousands of years. 
There is no smallest jot of testimony, 
physiological, paleontolgical or his- 
torical that man since he became man 
was ever exclusively graminivorous, 
frugivorous or carnivorous except 
when driven by circumstances. The 
conclusion then must be in favor of 
a mixed diet, that is, one which shall 
include in proper proportions animal 
and vegetable food, especially for 
nervous people who need above most 
others to be well-fed. 

A practical hint or two may be use- 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

ful to those who have no appetite or 
desire for food, and yet ought to take 
it. Have nothing to do with the 
choice, preparation or service of your 
own meals. If you have a fancy for 
something tell your household pur- 
veyor, but let it come to you unex- 
pected. The woman who orders a 
dinner has eaten it before it reaches 
the table ; if she cooks it too, then she 
has eaten it twice. Is it any wonder 
she has no appetite for a third course 
of it? 

A radical change in the hours of 
meals will sometimes help to provoke 
appetite, such as taking the chief 
meal of the day an hour earlier or 
later, or transferring it from mid- 
day to evening or vice versa. 

To rest before meals so as to come 
fresh and untired to table is good — 
and to rest after meals is a great help 
to weak digestions and if necessary 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

these times of rest should be included 
in the schedule and be precisely 
limited. 

In cases where it is almost impos- 
sible for the patient to take food for 
herself, she will often take enough 
without trouble if she is actually fed 
by another person's hand, — but any- 
how, let her eat! 

Sleep 

Of sleep there is little to be said 
which would not be mere repetition. 
Many nervous people sleep well, just 
as some eat well; it is probable that 
the ability to do either or both of 
these acts saves them from worse 
nervousness at least. Many, too, de- 
sire to get for themselves an alto- 
gether unnecessary quantity of sleep 
and are dissatisfied unless they secure 
a realty abnormal allowance. The 
hypochondriac whose fancy runs this 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

way will tell you with woe that she 
only got seven or eight hours' sleep 
— a period of slumber probably as 
long as would be needed by an active 
and healthy adult past the stage of 
youth and not yet arrived at the time 
when again more rest is needed to re- 
cruit the waning energies of old age. 
It is sometimes necessary to prove 
conclusively to a patient that more 
sleep is secured than he supposes. A 
medical friend suggested the plan 
in one such instance of inviting the 
person (who said he " never closed 
an eye at night") to sit up all night. 
This was tried one night, and a small 
part of a second — when he was found 
willing to admit that he must after 
all have slept a good deal. 

One warning cannot be too often 
repeated — medicines to produce sleep 
are dangerous, with different degrees 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

of danger, to be sure, but still not 
things to be trusted to the hands of 
ignorance, especially where ignorance 
is personally interested. Sleep-in- 
ducing drugs are occasionally neces- 
sary to save from worse evils, but 
they need supervision — a doctor's 
supervision, that is. Even the drugs 
which may fairly be described as 
harmless, sulfonal, trional and their 
kind, if used at all continuously have 
a bad effect upon the character of the 
blood, so that the user begins to get 
more and more pale and anaemic from 
this injury to the red blood cells and 
may bring about a really serious 
blood poverty, affecting the nutrition 
of the whole body. 

Economizing Energy 

Lastly as to economy of nervous 
energy. On this, too, much has been 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

said, but the text is a fruitful and 
suggestive one and many sermons 
could be hammered out of it. 

First, let it be repeated that 
whether the essential cause of ner- 
vousness can be reached and con- 
quered or not, the less open manifes- 
tations of nervousness the patient 
permits herself the better it will be 
for her in every way. 

Do not talk about your feelings or 
your fatigue or your sleep, do not 
utter or allow the word nerves to be 
uttered in your presence. 

If no better reason can be found, a 
decent consideration for the comfort 
of others should keep one from talk- 
ing of one's ailments. To talk about 
yourself is bad manners, to be sorry 
for yourself will make no one more 
sorry for you, and self-pity is a poor 
kind of emotion. Besides being bad 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

manners, it is well to remember that 
the subject is wholly without interest 
for any one but the speaker: the 
hearer listens perfunctorily in hopes 
presently to seize the chance of telling 
her own melancholy condition. 

To talk much of ills mental or 
bodily helps to fix them in the mind, 
to intensify them, often really makes 
them worse, and even when it does 
not do this is terribly apt to suggest 
an unconscious exaggeration to make 
a good round tale — and from this to 
imagining symptoms is a short and 
sadly easy step. To cultivate and en- 
courage genuine emotions to over- 
growth is bad enough, to sow and till 
a crop of false emotions is a moral 
crime. 

Moreover if you talk about your 
feelings too much or too often you not 
only irritate your friends who would 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

prefer to be talking about theirs, but 
even the long suffering physician may 
grow tired and inattentive from be- 
ing battered with symptoms whose 
catalogue he has heard a hundred 
times — and thus the very means taken 
to impress them will bring about its 
own defeat. 

There are women who think it 
feminine and interesting to be ner- 
vous and to be in a continual sizzle 
of excitement about little matters, 
and who thus acquire not only false 
standards of feeling, but presently 
a total inability to feel genuinely or 
simply about anything. 

Change of Schedule 

The scheduled plan of life is, of 

course, a temporary measure, though 

a similar systematization of the 

day's work to some extent is always 
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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

useful for any one who needs to save 
strength. Gradually as improvement 
comes the more inconvenient rules of 
the time-table may be relaxed or 
withdrawn one by one, holding on 
longest to the rest periods before and 
after meals. If the digestion is weak, 
the rest after meals is the more im- 
portant. If digestion is only bad 
when the patient is fatigued then the 
bef ore-meal rest should be the one to 
keep on with. 

If there is the direction of a 
household and the coming and going 
of a much demanding family to be 
borne, the isolation-period of unin- 
terrupted quiet for an hour or two 
at a set time during the day should 
be continued in order to make sure 
of at least that much respite. 

The benefits to be expected from 

this plan may be recapitulated — the 
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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

removal of the need for small de- 
cisions, the replacing of uncertainty 
and irregularity by exactness and 
punctuality, necessary rest at fixed 
times and a general lessening of wear 
and tear. In short it is an arrange- 
ment for the storage of nervous en- 
ergy and for its properly economical 
expenditure. 



V. 

Of Nervousness in Children and Its Prevention. 

The subject of nervousness in 
children, its prevention and cure, in- 
cludes the whole of education, using 
the word in its widest sense. The 
attempt to cover so vast a field might 
well give pause even to a popular lec- 
turer who is expected to compress all 
knowledge into fifteen minutes for 
easy comprehension and administer 
the concentrated wisdom of ancients 
and moderns in a condensed tablet 
capable of being swallowed at a single 
gulp. 

However, let us begin with a few 
questions which will serve as sign- 
posts to direct us through this too 
wide territory. The natural inquiries 
which would be made by a mother 
are: "Are my children likely to be 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

nervous? How shall I recognize the 
early manifestations % What must I 
do to prevent or cure them?" We 
will generalize these particular quer- 
ies and try to answer them in the 
briefest way. 

Causes 

What children are likely to be ner- 
vous? In the first chapter it was 
said that some people are born ner- 
vous, some acquire nervousness, and 
some have it thrust upon them. The 
statement will serve again. The off- 
spring of parents themselves nervous 
are more likely to display the inheri- 
tance in some form than those of 
persons w r ith no such tendency. The 
children of neurotic, or hysterical, or 
epileptic, or consumptive mothers or 
fathers very commonly show their 
taint physically or mentally. The 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

children of drunken parents with 
horrible frequency are imbecile, epi- 
leptic, or highly nervous. 

Of course the chance of a child's 
being diseased is greatly increased 
where both parents are the subjects 
of the same disease or have the same 
tendency. This intensification of in- 
heritance is one of the greatest rea- 
sons against the marriage of near 
cousins. 

Next after parental influence in 
importance stands the environment 
of children during the years of 
growth. Under the term environment 
are to be understood all the physical 
circumstances of life — i.e., food, 
clothing, climate, dwelling place. 
Along with these is to be considered 
the moral atmosphere which sur- 
rounds the child — i.e., the example, 



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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

companionship, discipline and con- 
trol to which it is subjected. 

Feeding Children 

At the risk of repetition emphasis 
must be laid again upon the question 
of nutrition, the more as this is one 
of the factors of health which is most 
within our control. We are not 
always at liberty to select our place 
to live, we cannot control climate, 
but we can give children enough 
food of good kinds. It has been said 
already that in the greater number 
of cases of nervousness some fault of 
nutrition is among the main causes 
and it was then also explained that 
this did not mean only insufficient 
food but also wrong food or wrong 
assimilation. In children whose 
parentage makes one apprehensive 
of future nervousness or whose dis- 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

position indicates tendencies in that 
direction especial care and considera- 
tion must therefore be given to the 
diet. This need not mean that they 
should have special foods but that 
what they get should be digestible, 
appetizing and sufficiently varied, 
monotony being one of the chief 
faults usually found in the feeding 
of young children. Over-careful 
adults sometimes unduly limit the 
quantity of food of older children 
when, judging by their own appetites 
or capacities, they refuse to allow the 
child all it wants whereas the child's 
unsophisticated instinct is a far bet- 
ter guide than the adult's mere opin- 
ion. This is true also to a great extent 
of the character of the food as well 
as the amount. For instance the de- 
sire for sugar in some form often 
regarded or reproved as merely an 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

unwholesome and gluttonous taste 
truly indicates a physiologic neces- 
sity and one that should be ministered 
to, not denied. Children who are 
allowed enough sugar in whatever 
shape may be convenient will not 
desire to gorge themselves with candy 
or poor sweet stuffs at undesirable 
times and in unreasonable quantities 
and their ceaseless activity soon 
burns it up. 

Men leading a life of hard muscu- 
lar exertion often share the same 
desire for sugar and I have seen 
a woodsman of mature years after 
many weeks of severe although well 
fed work in camp set himself down 
on his return to civilization and stow 
away a liberal pound of plain sugar 
candy. 

The final chapter of Herbert 
Spencer's " Education " contains 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

some useful reflections and sugges- 
tions on this subject, though his 
specific instances are drawn from 
English usage. He speaks with force 
of the danger in childhood from un- 
derfeeding being greater than from 
overfeeding, as growth retarded or 
interrupted at that period is never 
made up. 

Parents a Cause 

As for acquired nervousness, apart 
from disease and malnutrition, 
parents are the commonest cause of 
nervousness in children; sometimes 
by false precept or wrong methods 
but more often by unintentional ex- 
ample or suggestion. 

Even if a baby has some manifes- 
tations of nervousness, you should 
not be too ready to attribute all sorts 
of trouble in children to " nerves. " 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

Your grandmother laid the same 
sort of difficulties to "teething" — 
with as little reason. If the child is 
restless or irritable or sleepless, the 
chances are much greater that its 
digestive apparatus has gone wrong 
somewhere than that it is causelessly 
nervous or that its teeth are disturb- 
ing it. In consequence of the tender- 
ness resulting from teething the 
mouth secretions may be changed, 
thus affecting digestion, or the food 
may be insufficiently masticated. 
Make sure about these things and do 
not rest satisfied with calling the 
whole trouble teething and allowing 
it to go at that. Above all do not dose 
it with poisons under flat-catching 
names — soothing syrup, elixir, teeth- 
ing-balm, or what not. These with 
scarcely an exception contain opium 
in some form, a drug with specially 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

injurious effects upon children. The 
louder the advertisements assert that 
no such article is used in the prescrip- 
tion the more certain one may be that 
it is present. Remember, too, that 
what would be abnormal restlessness 
in an adult is only evidence of healthy 
activity in a little one. 

To the question how much of ner- 
vousness is avoidable or preventable 
it is not easy to give a categorical an- 
swer of a general kind. Each special 
individual problem needs special in- 
dividual solution. But it is true that 
in those whose tendencies inherited 
from parents or remoter ancestors 
are towards nervousness, any lower- 
ing of vitality will be apt to show 
itself in some form of nervous dis- 
turbance, exactly as happens in 
grown people. In this one, any im- 
pairment of general health results in 

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digestive troubles ; in that one, a like 
cause will produce headache or pain 
in the back; while in another whose 
weak link is in the nervous system 
various nervous symptoms will be the 
consequence. 

Heredity 

The means of prevention, as Dr. 
Holmes has somewhere said, would 
often have to be applied three or four 
generations back to be effectual. If 
the great-great-grandmother had not 
had that shock to her nerves when 
the Indians attacked the family log 
cabin in 1801, little Polly would not 
have been nervous in 1901. Admit- 
ting such difficulties and with all 
reservations made, it is nevertheless 
true that a large proportion of the 
cases of general nervousness that one 
sees could have been avoided or pre- 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

vented had they been recognized and 
treated at the proper time. 

A remnant of the superstitition 
which regarded the doctor as a sor- 
cerer, and his art as at best a sort of 
" white magic/' is the widespread 
feeling, against which a physician 
constantly finds himself striving, that 
there is a panacea for every woe, a 
medicine which fits every case, if only 
it can be discovered. Patients are 
unwilling to follow a definite, reason- 
able, carefully thought-out plan of 
life, and beg for a specific, for some 
drug which can be taken in teaspoon- 
ful doses three times a day, or for 
some remedy to be applied to the 
mind in five-minute shocks of prayer 
or hysterical exhortation, to serve in- 
stead of temperance, soberness and 
chastity. Unfortunately there are 
always quacks to be found to minis- 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

ter to this desire for a short and easy 
method, with patent systems of edu- 
cation for the mind wherewith the 
most ignorant may become a Newton 
by taking a brief course of lectures, 
patent foods to replace beef and 
bread, patent medicines as a substi- 
tute for common-sense, and patent 
methods of salvation to obviate the 
difficulties of walking in the straight 
and narrow way. 

To set this right at once so far as 
our present subject is concerned, let 
it be said without delay that there is 
no specific against nervousness, or if 
there be, it is not on the apothecary's 
shelves, nor, when there is a physical 
foundation, will the utmost constancy 
of effort in prayer or mental struggle 
suffice to cure until bodily health is 
restored. 

Tennyson has put it well for us : 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control — 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 

It has been said already that the 
strongest are the least nervous, not 
meaning by strongest the most mus- 
cular, but those in the soundest 
health of body and mind. No one 
is exempt from accidents of disease 
or injury, from the changes or 
chances which may result in ner- 
vousness as a consequence of im- 
paired nutrition or lessened vital 
force — but the likelihood of such a 
result is less in a hearty, robust 
child, not only because his nerves, as 
well as his other tissues, are better 
nourished, but because he has more 
power to resist the invasion of dis- 
ease, is less liable to serious effects 
from small injury, and has a stronger 
inherent tendency to recover both in 
his physical fibre and in his spirit 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

than a weaker individual. He has, 
in the common phrase, a better con- 
stitution. 

Hygiene of Nervousness 

It is impossible to put a treatise 
on the hygiene of infancy and child- 
hood into a few sentences, but some 
cautions may be emphasized. Health 
is not to be obtained for children or 
for their seniors by coddling process- 
es, and for both natural methods are 
the best. Games are better for chil- 
dren than gymnasium work, unless 
the latter be needed for some special 
reason, such as a crooked spine, a weak 
leg, bad breathing habits, the correc- 
tion of deformities, the improvement 
of an awkward carriage, and so on. 
Nor is there any reason why in the 
earlier years of life, until sex differ- 
ences begin to show, girls should 

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not have the same outdoor sports 
and activities as boys. If they are 
properly brought up in other respects 
and have good examples of manners 
and courtesy to imitate no fear need 
be felt of their being rude or rough 
in consequence. One does not expect 
boys to be rude because they play 
boisterous games, and anyhow a great 
gain is well worth a small risk. Re- 
member, too, that there is something 
to be learned from many games that 
is at least as important as the increase 
of muscle and the strengthening of 
the heart, for in those into which 
an element of rivalry enters, like ten- 
nis, baseball, cricket, basket-ball, the 
acquisition of self-control, the subor- 
dination of one's own share of the 
game to the desire for one's side to 
win, the playing of one's part under 
orders, and the calm acceptance of 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

defeat, all are disciplinary, and teach 
unconsciously some of the best lessons 
of life. 

To row, to ride, to swim, to handle 
a rod, a tennis racket, or a golf club 
are as much within the competence of 
girls as of boys. As for turning out 
tomboys instead of young ladies, that 
will take care of itself in course of 
time. And have you never observed 
that the little girls who bore the re- 
proach of being tomboys were rather 
apt to turn out very charming and 
attractive women? 

Dangers of Gymnasium Work 

A few words about physical educa- 
tion — and a caution. The various 
systems and methods of physical cul- 
tivation for the most part deal too 
exclusively with bodily functions and 
do not take into consideration the 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

part which the nervous system must 
have in physical acts. If they are 
unintelligently applied they often 
make the nervous worse — or at least, 
if they do no harm they fail to bring 
about any more vital or deeper-reach- 
ing improvement than an added 
muscular force. For example if a 
nervous child, especially a child 
whose brain is worked to its full 
capacity at school, is sent to a gym- 
nasium and put at exercises requiring 
careful attention to the orders of a 
teacher, or exact imitation of a 
teacher's motions, one effect of the 
exercise may very possibly be to give 
the child so much additional brain 
work as to overtax it. If the same 
child w r ere to take its exercise by play- 
ing well-known games, even violent 
ones, or by walking or bicycling, the 
performance of these would not need 

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the strain of attention, because the 
child can do them automatically and 
it would therefore profit far more, 
gaining all the advantage of muscular 
exertion without nervous effort. 

This is a point often neglected in 
the prescribing of exercise. A person 
intellectually and physically idle, on 
the other hand, would benefit more 
by exercise calling for active brain 
work and a constant effort of will 
in the ordering of muscular acts, thus 
securing the double advantage of 
cerebral and muscular work at the 
same time. 

Education 

The acquisition of self-control was 
cited as one of the advantages to be 
gotten from games, but other lessons 
in it will be needed. My own view is 
very far from the modern system 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

which allows the child to do as it 
pleases and holds that all control and 
discipline are wrong and that chil- 
dren should be governed by request 
and explanation. Suppose we tried to 
follow a similar plan in physical 
matters. Would it be reasonable to 
prepare for muscular effort by ab- 
staining from exertion? The moral 
qualities need to be kept in training 
as well as the bodily functions. If 
children were born with instinctive 
tendencies to be good and to tell the 
truth and to be obedient and to keep 
clean, the system would work very 
well. As it is, most children have 
human defects which need correction. 
Control them to teach them self- 
control. They will never acquire it 
so lightly in any other way. If they 
are left to learn at the knees of life 
what should have been taught in the 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

nursery they will find her a harder 
mistress than their mother, and buy 
the knowledge with pain and blood 
and with the bitter tears of man and 
woman, instead of the passing griefs 
of childhood- 
Few grown people are so fortunate 
as to need to take no thought for 
health, but this is a burden from 
which children should be free. Their 
food, clothes, rest and activities 
must be ordered and regulated for 
them ; but let no anxiety to please the 
child, no consideration for infantile 
feelings, induce the mother to inquire 
too much about health. She should 
depend on her own observation, for 
with those of nervous tendency it is 
frightfully easy by fussing to make 
them into most promising hypochon- 
driac invalids before their skirts 
reach below their knees. Above all, 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

there should be no talk of the child's 
nervousness or its feelings or ail- 
ments, real or fanciful, in its 
presence. 

The coachman's rough and ready 
rule is not a bad one to judge by ; if 
his horse eats he thinks there is not 
much wrong. If your young hopeful 
takes food well no great alarm need 
be felt, for in children the stomach 
is a quick-acting index to the general 
condition. Even with healthy and 
strong children there is danger if 
they are asked too much about how 
they feel, or hear too much about the 
wholesomeness or possible ill effects 
of this or that diet. Some of the fore- 
told results will very likely soon be 
observed by a sensitive child, more 
fussing follows on the part of an 
anxious parent, and the prophecy is 
presently in a fair way to fulfilment. 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

A child should never know it has a 
body until that fact is forced upon 
it ; most certainly it should not learn 
it by being taught over-respect for 
small pains, the over-anxious consid- 
eration of food and constant watch- 
fulness of its own feelings. Feeling 
about feelings and thinking about 
thinking are dangerous habits for a 
responsible adult and fatal for a 
child. 

Precept and Example 

It is even more necessary to re- 
member that though precept may be 
important, example has greater 
power, and children with the faculty 
for imitation largely developed are in- 
fluenced both consciously and uncon- 
sciously by what they see and hear. 
A complaining restless mother, at 
war with herself, finding fault with 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

her surroundings, with no settled 
plan of education, is certain to bring 
up querulous, irritable, " nervous" 
children. If she cannot understand 
her own temperament, how can she 
recognize the several perhaps widely 
differing individual characters of her 
children ? 



10 



VI. 

Sympathy — Its Use and Its Abuse. 

The original meaning of sympathy, 
" feeling with" a person, has become 
so perverted in common usage that in 
English the word has lost a large part 
of its value. In French and Italian it 
retains the additional notion of com- 
prehension and understanding of all 
the feelings of others, whether joy 
or pain. With us, it denotes as ordi- 
narily employed only pity, with per- 
haps a color of sorrow for suffering 
— a passing and superficial emotion, 
not a constant attitude of the mind. 

Those "in trouble, sorrow, need, 
sickness or any other adversity" are 
fit subjects for sympathy, but how 
shall it be best expressed and made 
most useful % Sick persons, especially 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

nervous invalids, are far too apt to 
consider that no one is sympathetic 
who does not fuss over them, accept 
complaints at their face value, yield 
completely to every whim, admire and 
approve the noble courage with which 
their ills are borne, sing praises of 
their fortitude and tell over the tale 
of their woes to every listener in and 
out of season. 

False Sympathy 

The appetite for this false and in- 
jurious sympathy grows fast by what 
it feeds on. The invalid demands 
more and more of it and wants the 
dose made stronger. If real ailments 
do not furnish ground for complaint 
they may readily be magnified: in 
time certain types of patients begin 
to invent them in order to gain ap- 
probation, consideration, in short, 

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in their own phrase, " needed 
sympathy. " 

Not so rarely with those of hypo- 
chondriac tendency, the ideas at first 

*/ 7 

half involuntarily put forward to 
secure attention grow till they master 
mind and body and become obses- 
sions, of whose unreal character the 
one possessed with them is no longer 
aware. When such notions are once 
established it is nearly impossible to 
dislodge them — and although by long 
and careful care, physical and moral, 
the patient may be brought to per- 
ceive their falsity, the notions never- 
theless remain in the mental back- 
ground, to start into pernicious 
activity the moment that lowered 
nervous or bodily tone gives oppor- 
tunity. 

The effect upon the giver of false 
sympathy is bad. Real feeling can- 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

not be poured out in floods to meet 
every-day demands, often upon most 
trivial grounds, without a serious 
drain. The effect is still worse if the 
feeling has to be imitated or a little 
real feeling largely diluted to in- 
crease the apparent supply. Imita- 
tions and adulterations of the genuine 
article pass pretty well, because what 
is wanted is words and external ex- 
pressions, not earnest and heartfelt 
emotion. To counterfeit emotions is 
bad for the utterers of such false coin 
— ma\es it impossible for them to 
feel truly or to express real feeling in 
a truthful way. They soon grow to 
think their dull counterfeits are the 
pure gold of the heart. 

The patient too, at first satisfied 
with any expression of feeling, grows 
more and more exigent and either 
wants stronger doses of the wine of 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

flattery or becomes weak enough to 
be satisfied with the most foolish ex- 
pressions of it, and a small amount 
of real feeling must be more and more 
alloyed with base metal, until it takes 
utterly silly forms, like that of the 
mother who slaps the table to comfort 
the child that has bumped its head 
against the naughty piece of furni- 
ture. To be sure this harms the table 
little but does it tend to a wholesome 
attitude of mind in the child? 

Not for a moment should this be 
taken as meaning that loving service 
and earnest affection are not valu- 
able and helpful things to the sick — 
but they must be mingled with intelli- 
gence, with real comprehension, not 
a superficial imitation, and there 
must be a certain kind of detached 
and critical position maintained in 
order to keep the judgment unim- 
paired. 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

True Sympathy 

By what test shall genuine sym- 
pathy be recognized? How far and 
in what way is sympathy useful to 
the mind-sick? It is often not the 
fault either of the sick person or of 
her too fond attendants that the con- 
dition above described is reached. 
At first, want of understanding of 
the character or seriousness of the 
illness may cause a wrong position 
to be taken from which it is hard 
to escape. The false perspective 
previously spoken of and the making 
of trifles unduly important, are natu- 
ral consequences of long-continued 
sickness but must be guarded against, 
— particularly when the illness prom- 
ises to be long. The maintenance of 
a wholesome atmosphere, of an in- 
terest in things outside of self should 
be sought for in every way and at all 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

times. The needed attention to phys- 
ical necessities, pain, discomfort, 
the annoyance of bodily disablement, 
should not be allowed to banish or 
outweigh intellectual interest and 
occupation. 

True sympathy keeps its ability to 
hold the balance between overindul- 
gence of whims, permitting the 
growth of fanciful troubles, encour- 
aging complaints, on the one side, and 
neglect or want of recognition of the 
actual state of the patient's mind on 
the other. True sympathy involves 
comprehension of what the sufferer's 
self cannot recognize : true sympathy 
sees clearly, realizes honestly, and can 
if need be administer with tact and 
consideration the wholesome bitter of 
truth, a tonic which however sweetly 
and earnestly offered is seldom re- 
ceived kindly by a patient whose un- 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

healthy cravings ask different or less 
useful medicine. 

Sympathetic Doctors 

" Prof essional sympathy " as usu- 
ally understood is the poorest imita- 
tion of all. What it ought to be is 
active, helpful, clear-sighted, doing 
what is best with the sole aim of cure. 
It need not be brutal or tactless, but 
it must disregard the patient's feel- 
ings or look upon them as of secon- 
dary moment. What such patients as 
we are speaking of mean when they 
praise their doctor as sympathetic is 
that he is a pleasant mannered, atten- 
tive, hand-holding kind of person, 
willing to accept their own estimate 
of their feelings, to take their symp- 
tomatic statements literally, be ready 
to administer endless, usually harm- 
less, prescriptions and to come for 

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SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

that purpose at any hour of the night. 
To act thus is not so wearing, but if 
the physician were really sympathetic 
in the usual sense of the word he 
would soon be disabled for the prac- 
tice of his profession. If he had liter- 
ally to " suffer with " some dozens 
of patients every day, how long would 
his emotional possibilities stand the 
strain % It is surely enough to ask of 
him to know what to do and to do it, 
often at the risk of misunderstand- 
ing, of reproach from the ignorant, 
of absence of appreciation from those 
to whom he is giving of his best. A 
doctor who seems to sympathize too 
much is to be distrusted. If this 
sympathy is pretended that should 
morally disqualify him: if he truly 
feels in the way patients often de- 
mand, then he is unfitted for calm 
judgment. There are plenty of cases 

154 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

which call for treatment that may 
be painful, distressing or dangerous. 
How can a man balance coolly ques- 
tions of suffering, of life and death, 
where his affections are involved with 
the answer ? You may recall that no 
sensible physician will attend his own 
family, a matter which seems to 
afford a good deal of amusement to 
the laity ; the reason lies precisely in 
the fact that where his feelings are 
concerned his judgment is likely to 
be colored by them. One might even 
go further and say that a physician 
personally strange to the patient is 
often all the better judge of what is 
needed for his very lack of biassing 
knowledge. 

Let me illustrate the difference : A 
surgeon was called in consultation by 
a lady physician to see a boy suffer- 
ing with tubercular disease of the 

155 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

bones of the ankle. On consideration 
lie advised amputation of the foot 
before the infection spread further. 
But the sympathetic physician would 
not listen to this because, said she, the 
boy was so beautiful and attractive 
it was a shame to condemn him to 
lose his foot. Amputation was ac- 
cordingly postponed and ultimately, 
the disease ascending, the leg had to 
be taken off at the thigh to save his 
life — involving an operation of 
greater risk, a far greater lameness, 
and all because he had a sympathetic 
doctor who admired his golden curls. 

Self=fulness 

The nervous patient who is bright, 
charming and agreeable with stran- 
gers and querulous, selfish, affection- 
demanding at home, is a well-known 
type, too often the product of a 

156 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

sympathizing and devoted family. 
What is needed in such cases is a 
doctor who sympathizes with the 
family which is the victim of her 
cravings rather than with her and 
who removes her to a different atmos- 
phere where, with every real atten- 
tion to her physical needs, her moral 
cultivation will be attended to as well, 
sympathy be replaced by cool-headed, 
shrewd understanding, and gradual 
education lift her to a point where 
she will be able to see for herself how 
unwholesome her environment has 
been, how opposite to curative the 
treatment she has demanded and 
received. 

From this and the previous chap- 
ters' utterance on self-control, it will 
be seen that in my belief expressing 
excessive feeling, demanding exces- 
sive indulgence and over-considera- 

157 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

tion by the f amily, too much caressing 
and fussing, in short, coddling, are 
great factors in the manufacture or 
increase of many nervous illnesses. A 
desire for dramatic effect often urges 
patients, even children, to overstate 
their symptoms and sometimes, if the 
expected result is not secured, to in- 
vent them. If this sort of untruth — 
the falsehood of a sick mind, not a 
moral fault — is suspected or recog- 
nized, the best tone to take is one 
of calm, matter-of-fact acceptance. 
Every actor needs an audience and 
a sympathetic one to do his best; if 
there is no audience, there will be no 
play. 

Vampire Patients 

There is another kind of patient, 
worse in some ways than the one who 
seeks an unwholesome kind or quan- 
tity of sympathy, because more diffi- 

158 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

cult to deal with. I know of no 
phrase to describe her. I know of 
no means of accounting for her effect 
on those about her, nor is there any 
description of her in the medical 
books, though nurses and doctors 
know the type sadly well. 

This is the woman who, with or 
without special demands for sym- 
pathy or consideration, " takes it 
out " of every one near, seeming to 
absorb strength and vitality from 
those about her to their detriment yet 
not to her gain. She is always a 
chronic invalid, she may be young or 
old, agreeable or disagreeable, attrac- 
tive or the reverse, her qualities seem 
to have no share in the effect. An 
ordinary quarter hour's visit to her 
leaves you exhausted, squeezed dry. 
She uses up nurses like a machine 
grinding material. One sees charm- 

159 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

ing people of this sort, intellectual, 
cultivated, with lively sympathies of 
their own, who are perfectly unable 
to appreciate their peculiar influence 
upon others and in spite of agreeable 
conversation, quick comprehension 
and active intelligence, one looks for- 
ward with dread to the necessary 
visit. 

The two worst of the kind I remem- 
ber were of very contrasting sorts; 
the one, like those just described, had 
both physical and mental attractions, 
was unselfish so far as her intentions 
went, amiable, and every w r ay socially 
desirable. 

The other was an uninteresting, 
ordinary-looking, middle aged woman 
of irritable temper, neither cultivated 
nor agreeable, though the kind of 
willing invalid w T ho gets herself up 
with care for the doctor's visit and 

160 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

11 enjoys ill health. " She had a long- 
suffering husband who had nearly 
reached his limit of endurance and 
she had worn out several friendly or 
related care-takers. She was full of 
cravings for sympathy and apprecia- 
tion and told pathetic stories of imag- 
inary woes in the most restrained and 
subdued fashion — but besides this 
and quite apart from it, she had the 
most astonishingly exhausting effect 
on every one about her. Nurses gave 
out after two or three weeks of service 
and retired to their beds to recuper- 
ate. An unimaginative Scotchwoman 
who gave her massage said that she 
went away from the bedside every 
day "like a wet rag" and had on 
several occasions burst into quite 
causeless tears on her way to her next 
engagement. As this lady had no 
disease except imaginary ones she 

11 161 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

proved naturally very difficult to 
treat. Steady and persistent forcing 
and unrelenting discipline put her on 
her unwilling feet at last, at a terrible 
cost in nervous energy expended by 
nurses and physicians. As she had no 
desire to be well or active, she prob- 
ably relapsed again — and the efforts 
to cure her were wasted. No sugges- 
tion I have heard made accounts 
satisfactorily for these cases and 
their curious personal influence on 
others. 

Value of Sympathy 

Finally it must be repeated that 
what has been said is not intended to 
deprecate the importance and value 
of sympathy and loving devotion in 
illness, but rather to warn against the 
bad results attendant upon the abuse 
of such feelings and to indicate how 

162 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

they may be well and wisely used to 
help instead of to hinder ; nor if much 
has been made of the selfishness and 
cowardice of too many nervous in- 
valids does that prevent the heartiest 
recognition of the extraordinary 
courage and calm determination not 
to yield to the demoralizing effect of 
pain and wretchedness one is permit- 
ted sometimes to see ; only, it is neces- 
sary to sound a warning against weak 
yielding to the blows of circumstance ; 
the resistance of the strong soul wins 
prompt acknowledgement and every 
one who sees the brave defense has- 
tens with help to bring new weapons, 
to sharpen the old ones, to strike a 
blow on the side of the one who means 
never to give up the fight, but to say 

" It matters not how straight the gate, 

How charged with punishment the scroll, 
I am the master of my fate, 
I am the captain of my soul." 

163 



VII. 

Religion and Nervousness — Treatment of Ner- 
vous Diseases by Clergy — Reasons for their 
Frequent Failure to Help — Emmanuel Church 
Movement — Truthfulness — Doctors and Pa- 
tients — Conclusions. 

Those who have read thus far will 
it is hoped have drawn for themselves 
the conclusion that, for the treat- 
ment or prevention of those minor 
degrees of nervousness which have 
been the subjects of our discourse, 
economy of nervous expenditure is a 
central and vital element, whether 
the treatment is conducted by the vic- 
tim herself or by a physician. It is 
to this end that counsels about physi- 
cal life, food, hours, rest, self-control, 
the doing away with over-considera- 
tion of self, and the suppression of 
emotional manifestations all tend. 

164 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

Helpful Religion 

An old friend criticises these ar- 
ticles for omitting the mention of 
higher means of help than these; — I 
quote her because she is an authority, 
and has herself for many years been 
the stern mistress of an hysterical 
and fantastically irritable nervous 
system that, less strictly and consist- 
ently ruled, would long since have 
consigned her to an invalid's couch, 
in place of the active helpful life she 
has led. She is well aware, she says, 
"that nervous women must learn-self- 
control, a willingness to bear suffer- 
ing, a great unwillingness to incom- 
mode others. For strength to do 
this should they not be pointed to the 
promises of Christianity ? It is only 
in religion honestly believed and 
bravely lived up to that sure help can 
finally be found." Another letter 

165 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

supplies a further text, though this is 
from a man, a clergyman, who writes, 
"I want to ask you whether Christian 
people — of the real sort — are or are 
not more exempt from nervous pros- 
tration than others 1 ' ' These two let- 
ters suggest some discourse upon the 
relations of religion, in belief and in 
observance, to nervous suffering and 
upon the ways in which ministers of 
religion can aid the nervous. To the 
first letter the reply must surely be 
an unqualified " Yes" and it would be 
hard to put into better words than 
the writer's the essence of the whole 
subject. 

Let us look at the general aspects 
of the matter and then consider in 
more detail the treatment of nervous 
diseases by clergymen, its limitations 
and the proper places where the min- 
ister may intervene with hope of 
helpfulness. 

166 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

The neurologist sees folk of all re- 
ligions, Christians and Jews, infidels 
and heretics, and once they have be- 
come nervous there is little choice 
among them. Perhaps by the time 
the doctor sees them, it is already too 
late to make practical application of 
beliefs that, properly used at the 
proper time, might have saved them. 

Failure of Ministers 

If the sufferer or her friends could 
see that there is an early stage at 
which a minister capable of wise use 
of the opportunity should be able to 
halt her downward career, much good 
might be done and much illness and 
unhappiness prevented. But while 
patients will usually tell their doctors 
and sometimes their friends of their 
fears, apprehensions, doubts and 
obsessions they seem unwilling to 

167 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

consult a spiritual adviser or do not 
recognize the need of one or the 
happy moment for his intervention, 
until the time and the chance have 
passed. I fear that one reason for 
this may lie in the fact that they so 
seldom get the aid and comfort they 
might expect from the church. In 
many years of observation of all 
kinds and degrees of nervous and 
mental ailments, it has not been my 
good fortune to get much assistance 
for my patients from the ministers 
of their several forms of faith. 
Some people, especially those with 
the milder kinds of mental depres- 
sion or afflicted with that malady of 
indecision so often spoken of in 
these pages, beg for counsel from 
their pastors. Such instances are 
most suitable for clerical interposi- 
tion and may be called selected cases, 

168 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

and when the adviser has been called 
I have always been careful to lay the 
history before him and to leave him 
free to act as seemed to him best. In 
the result harm has been done to the 
patient's mental state quite as often 
as good. Nor can I recall a single 
cure effected by these means at this 
period. There must be reasons for 
such a general want of success. Cer- 
tainly any faith that holds a belief 
in the infinite goodness and love of 
God ought to be helpful to one who 
is worried, assailed with doubts of 
self and other things, anxious, self- 
tormented and depressed. The 
minister of whatever sect should be 
able to assist in guiding wandering 
and unsteady feet upon the right path 
and helping them on their way. Some 
of the reasons for failure can doubt- 
less be found in the mind or in the 

169 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

very disease of the sufferers; some 
of them in the personality, position 
or equipment of the adviser. For 
one thing the absolute and unques- 
tioned authority once held by the 
minister is no longer his or at least 
is not his in the Protestant sects and 
this naturally tells against him in 
cases in which it is so necessary to 
direct certain things to be done or left 
undone. In the Roman Church the 
power of the priest gives his least 
word great weight, and he has usually 
also the advantage of a very intimate 
acquaintance with the conditions, 
physical, spiritual and temporal of his 
flock, so that his advice or command 
is not only strengthened by his ability 
to enforce it but founded upon better 
personal knowledge of all the circum- 
stances. The Roman clergyman is 
thus often more successful as an 

170 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

adviser for he is able to command 
obedience where other ministers can 
only try to get it. 

Want of Faith 

Yet another reason is the attitude 
of mind of the sufferers themselves. 
They are often most unwilling, some- 
times probably unable, to see how 
w r rong living or want of faith can 
have had anything to do with their 
predicament. They have been so 
accustomed to hear of the goodness 
of God they could never bring them- 
selves to Job's point of view — " Shall 
we receive good at the hand of God 
and shall we not receive evil also?" 
Neither would they see the force and 
strength of such an exhortation as 
Phillips Brooks' "Do not pray for 
easy lives. Pray to be stronger men ! 
Do not pray for tasks equal to your 

171 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

powers. Pray for powers equal to 
your tasks !" 

These excuses apply especially to 
those which I have called selected 
cases — ones, that is, which would be 
held particularly suitable for and 
likely to be helped by religious advice 
and advisers. Apart from these there 
is a very large class of nervous pa- 
tients, probably a majority of all those 
afflicted with disease of strictly neu- 
rasthenic type, in whom there exists 
a real physical basis for their trouble, 
which cannot be removed or altered 
by belief or faith or good advice un- 
less certain bodily changes take place 
also, notably an improvement in nu- 
trition. It is necessary to recognize 
this and not to be misled by a change 
of labels. The treatment of hysteria 
for example is not much furthered 
by calling it "a dissociation of per- 

172 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

sonality," nor does such a phrase in 
any way tend to lessen the general 
ignorance of the real character of the 
malady or help any one to recognize 
the fact that hysteria (as distin- 
guished from hysterics) is as clearly 
a disease as pneumonia and is not a 
creation of the physician's or the pa- 
tient's fancy. Secondly, there are the 
born neurasthenics, who have imper- 
fect nervous systems, whom no man 
can make whole. Lastly it has to he 
remembered that sometimes w r hat 
even to the careful and instructed 
student of nervous diseases appears 
to be but a moderately severe neuras- 
thenia proves in the end to have been 
the nervous state preceding grave 
mental disorder. Not even the largest 
experience can always make a true 
estimate of these three conditions at 
first sight so it cannot be hoped that 

173 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

sympathy and inexperience will be 
able to do so. 

This brings us to the very difficult 
consideration of the fitness and 
ability of clergymen not simply to 
help the physician with nervous cases 
but to undertake their direction them- 
selves, a matter now claiming much 
attention. Even supposing that they 
do not strike the impossible ones just 
mentioned but taking it for granted 
that the time is favorable and the case 
suitable have they generally speak- 
ing the equipment to deal with 
them ? 

Why Ministers Fail 

I hope I shall be understood to 
speak with all respect and without 
prejudice in expressing very grave 
doubts of the general capacity of 
clergymen for doing this. Too often 

174, 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

even when informed beforehand of 
the character of the disease the 
clergyman does not seem able to dif- 
ferentiate between unhappiness or 
disturbance of mind caused by genu- 
ine religious doubts — a subject proper 
for his consideration — and the self- 
tormenting of persons obsessed by a 
fixed idea of sin or of crime or by 
mere vague formless doubt. The 
danger involved in this inability lies 
in the fact that such ideas may be 
preliminary symptoms of insanity or 
of some serious nervous disease of or- 
ganic origin and that to attempt to 
help by religious advice, exhortations 
or explanations would be not simply 
waste of time and energy but would 
seriously lessen the patient's chances 
of recovery by putting off indefinitely 
long the absolutely needed medical 
treatment. 

175 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

Qualifications Necessary 

It is not to be supposed that a 
minister should be able unaided to 
make these nice psychic distinctions 
unless he has had an experience of 
life of a kind he can seldom have had, 
have taken a course or two in patho- 
logic psychology and studied for a 
few years in a nervous clinic. A 
physician is not expected to make a 
differential diagnosis between small- 
pox and chicken-pox by book learn- 
ing alone, but the minister, ignorant 
of the treatment of physical ailments, 
whose very conditions of life and 
work are all too apt to set him apart 
from intimate contact as a man 
among men with men's temptations 
and sufferings and doubts, is ex- 
pected to be ready to recognize and 
treat on sight all cases of soul- 



176 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

sickness.* Many and many doctors 
will be found refusing to attempt the 
handling of such conditions and con- 
fessing freely that neither their in- 
clinations nor their experience has 
fitted them for such undertakings, but 
the clergyman with his heart full of 
good intentions and with a little 
pamphlet from Boston in his hand 
proposes himself as sufficiently 
equipped to tackle any of them. 
Where one minister, naturally and by 
study and experience fitted for such 
work, succeeds, hundreds have failed 
and will fail and in failing will 
postpone or make more difficult, 
perhaps even impossible, a future 
cure. 



* Of course this will be thought untrue by min- 
isters who probably do not know themselves that men 
not only speak a different language in a minister's 
presence from the one they ordinarily use, but even 
speak in a different voice. 
12 177 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

The standard of knowledge and ex- 
perience suggested is no doubt a high, 
perhaps an impossibly high one, nor 
would I be understood to assert that 
such attainments are common among 
doctors and absent among clergymen. 
It is only claimed that the doctor even 
if not thoroughly fitted in every way 
is able to judge better of his own 
ability or inability to handle such 
matters and knows better what his 
own limitations are. 

Emmanuel Plan 

It is for these reasons among others 
that the Emmanuel method seems to 
me undesirable or impracticable for 
most ministers to attempt, however 
successful in the hands of its origina- 
tors. Very few are to be found pos- 
sessed like Dr. Worcester of judg- 
ment, tact, insight into men, acquaint- 

178 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

ance with psychic processes and above 
all with a large human interest, as 
weapons, and terrible damage may 
follow the use of such instruments 
by men moved only by enthusiasm 
without knowledge. 

Dangers of Hypnotism 

The greatest danger of all is the 
use of hypnotism in any form or 
degree, a two-edged sword, capable 
indeed of usefulness but more capable 
of harm. After years of study, be- 
ginning with too easy an approval 
of it, hypnotism whether called by 
that name or by the unsuitable one of 
" suggestion " has been laid aside by 
the medical profession as a means too 
dangerous for ordinary use, involving 
great risk of deterioration of charac- 
ter in the subject if often repeated, 
and putting a terribly tempting tool 

179 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

in the hands of the user, fascinating 
in the ease with which it can produce 
superficial and temporary good re- 
sults and equally capable of being 
used for harmful ones. 

A susceptible person, once hypno- 
tized, is more and more easily thrown 
into the hypnotic state until even the 
slightest hint suffices to bring about 
the condition. It is not necessary for 
the hypnotization to go so far as deep 
sleep; this more advanced stage is 
indeed seldom required, and to say 
that persons are not hypnotized be- 
cause they are not put into a sleep 
or a trance shows ignorance of the 
subject. 

I am not asserting that very slight 
degrees of the hypnotic condition are 
as dangerous as the deeper, but I do 
say that all degrees of it are danger- 
ous to the integrity and healthy action 

180 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

of the subject's nervous system. The 
danger of harm increases with every 
repetition of the hypnotization. 

In "suggestible," that is, over-sus- 
ceptible, individuals, who are almost 
universally neurotic persons, to fix 
the eyes on a small point, especially a 
bright one, sometimes even to fix the 
mind on the one idea of going into 
the hypnotic state (mild or deep), is 
enough without further intervention 
from any one, to put them into that 
state. 

In the report of one lecture on the 
Emmanuel method by one of its most 
distinguished exponents, the state- 
ment was made that a "crystal ball" 
was given the subject to look at 
merely "to fix his attention." This 
is one of the very oldest methods of 
hypnotism, and one of the surest, 



181 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 



especially easy and especially danger- 
ous.* 



Forms of Faith and Nervousness 

Before leaving the subject of the 
relation of religion to nervousness 
there remains the delicate matter of 
the influence of different sects, sug- 
gested or involved in the question of 
the second correspondent quoted at 
the beginning of the chapter. One 

* Within a few hours of writing the above para- 
graphs an article by Dr. A. L. Benedict of Buffalo, 
a physician of distinction, came into my hands from 
which I quote his opinion upon hypnotism and the 
Emmanuel method: 

" The Emmanuel Church movement seems to the 
writer especially dangerous because of the eminent 
respectability and intelligence in non-medical matters 
of its advocates. . . . Its dangers are two-fold: 
first, its practitioners, the clergy and perhaps the 
lay members — lay in both ecclesiastic and medical 
sense — openly declare their intention to practise 
hypnotism in suitable cases. Hypnotism should never 
be practised except by an experienced physician, and 
then only in exceptionally favorable cases. The 
individual who has been hypnotized has lost just so 
182 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

interesting comment can be made up- 
on this, besides what has been already 
said. 

Although it is a mere impression 
and one from the nature of the case 
not capable of documentary or statis- 
tical proof, I am inclined to think that 
those communions in which ceremo- 
nial observances are strictly enforced, 
with hours for prayer, set times for 
meditation and so on, furnish less 



much of his independent mental life. . . . Every 
seance increases his susceptibility. It is a serious 
matter to allow influence to supplant conscious intel- 
ligence, and it is no imaginary fear that seduction, 
crime, and undue control may follow. . . . 

" Secondly, psychotherapy, especially when prac- 
tised by an enthusiast, whether a physician or not, 
is bound to be applied to cases in which an organic 
disease is overlooked. . . . 

" In plain words, this means that even a compe- 
tent physician cannot unerringly exclude organic dis- 
ease, at least not at one or a few examinations. 
. . . It is obviously impossible to apply to the 
clientele of such a method even the moderately rig- 
orous methods of a life-insurance examiner." — The 
Therapeutic Gazette, Sept., 1908. 
183 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

than their due quota of nervous 
patients. According to one's individ- 
ual belief this may be considered as 
an effect of religion or may be attrib- 
uted to the fact that as a consequence 
of the necessity for carrying out these 
duties at exact moments there is a 
sort of approach to the schedule plan 
of life I have recommended for the 
nervous, with a resulting improved 
mental and moral equilibrium. It is 
certainly true that considering as ex- 
amples two such widely separated 
forms of religious belief as the Ortho- 
dox Jews and the strict Roman 
Catholics, one does not see as many 
patients from them as from their 
numbers might be expected, espe- 
cially when it is remembered that 
Jews as a whole are a very nervous 
people and that the Roman Church in 
this country includes among its mem- 

184 



SEJLF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

bers numbers of the most emotional 
race in the world. 

Of only one sect can I recall no 
example. It is not in my memory 
that a professing Quaker ever came 
into my hands to be treated for ner- 
vousness. If the opinion I have 
already stated so often is correct, 
namely that want of control of the 
emotions and the over-expression of 
the feelings are prime causes of ner- 
vousness, then the fact that discipline 
of the emotions is a lesson early and 
constantly taught by Friends, would 
help to account for the inf requency of 
this disorder among them and add 
emphasis to the belief in such a 
causation. 

Truthfulness 

One more letter I quote with some 
alarm. The writer is a woman, it 
should be said, an experienced invalid 

185 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

of twenty years' standing, full of 
courage still. She informs me that 
it " ought to be strongly said that if 
women were more truthful there 
would be less nervous breakdowns." 
No mere man would dare to make 
such an assertion in such a form, 
though some part of what was said 
in the last chapter bears upon this 
subject. One may venture to imagine 
that the writer probably meant to 
imply something wider and deeper 
than the ordinary superficial sense of 
the word truthful. Truth does not 
consist solely or wholly in the exact 
statement of bare physical fact; an 
exact statement may often be untrue, 
and at best is but the raw material 
of truthfulness. It is surely some- 
thing higher and more important 
than this that she would seem to in- 
tend. She would forbid the worship 

186 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

of false standards of life, permit no 
sham emotions, and thus prevent the 
deterioration of character, will and 
intellect inevitably resulting from 
these forms of falsehood. 

" Veracity to sentiment, truth in a 
relation, truth to your own heart and 
your friends, never to feign or falsify 
emotion — that is the truth which 
makes love possible and mankind 
happy." 

One of the real difficulties in the 
erection and maintenance of such a 
standard is the deep rooted imme- 
morial prejudice of women in favor 
of the surface of things which causes 
them to value always the appearance 
above the reality, to snatch at the 
shadow and leave the substance. 

If truthfulness in a high sense re- 
quires us not to exaggerate or pretend 
feelings it must surely be desirable 

187 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

that we should aid others to practise 
the like virtues by not craving from 
them pity that cannot be all and 
always genuine, nor demanding a 
constant lively sympathy that must 
be mostly words. 

To suffer and be strong, alone, is 
a hard saying, a counsel of perfec- 
tion, indeed, and not to be expected 
from poor human nature, but it is 
better to aim at that mark than to sit 
effortless and whining, content to be 
discontented, with no desire much 
higher than to astonish with new 
symptoms spectators whose admira- 
tion is subsidized beforehand by 
affection. 

Perhaps a philosopher might tell 
us that in this enterprise, as in the 
larger aspects of life, there can be 
no such thing as success, and that 
only self-deception will be satisfied; 
at least one can but try, and to try 

188 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

and keep trying will maintain one's 
self-respect, whatever else is lost. 

Self Help 

Endeavor then not to talk of your- 
self and your sickness any more than 
is absolutely necessary. Put them 
from you — hold them at arm's 
length and if you need incentive to 
silence remember once for all that, 
even if your friends listen politely, 
they are not really interested, or at 
best no more than for one or two 
hearings; whatever they may say, 
however they may appear, they are 
bored, perhaps disgusted. Sometimes 
one is almost ready to say that the 
continual display of sick emotions is 
an immodest exposure of the feelings. 

How to Get Nervous 

Still more determined, if you are 
nervous yourself, should be your 

189 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

stand against letting others talk of 
their miseries to you. Even the 
healthy cannot bear the continual 
presentation of disease to them with- 
out liability to imaginary infection 
therefrom. A professor in a medical 
school can always tell what stage 
of study the undergraduates have 
reached by the stories of the lads who 
come to consult him, quite convinced 
that they have heart disease, appendi- 
citis, or consumption, the malady de- 
pending upon the subjects of the most 
recent lectures. 

The same influence is constantly 
seen where the common meeting 
rooms of a hospital or sanitarium 
gave opportunity for this inter- 
change; no rules or regulations will 
stop it, because rules will not lessen 
the amount of " human nater" in 
man, or in woman either. The in- 

190 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

evitable result is that one presently 
finds symptoms have been quite suc- 
cessfully swapped, the most nervous 
and apprehensive patients securing 
the largest share, but each acquiring a 
few from the other invalids, accord- 
ing to the individual capacity for the 
absorption and reproduction of the 
disorders described. 

It does not follow from all this 
that you should never speak to any 
one of your ailments — only that you 
should select the person and the time. 
It is certainly true that to tell one's 
troubles is often a help and a relief ; 
but tell them once, not repeatedly, 
whether to friend or physician, 
secure the advice you need, take it 
if you are able to take advice, for 
which few are strong enough, and 
then hold your tongue, remembering 
that the most exciting story grows 

191 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

dull by repetition, and that the effect 
of 

A thrice-told tale 
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man 

is not what you want to produce. 

When you are confessing tell your 
doctor everything — once! Best treat 
your doctor as a doctor, too: it is 
not necessary, it may even be unde- 
sirable, that he should be a friend. 
Professional understanding and a 
reasonable amount of imagination 
will suffice to put him in your place, 
enough at any rate for comprehension 
of "the case." 

By all means get if you can the 
honest opinion of a disinterested per- 
son as to how much attention you 
should pay to your symptoms and 
which of them would be better for a 
little wholesome neglect, but if you 
ask the same question of each new- 

192 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

hatched, unfledged acquaintance the 
only certain consequence must be con- 
fusion of mind and may be possibly 
disaster. 

Final 

The preventives of nervousness are 
a sound body, a healthy mind, and a 
wholesome life. With these, barring 
accidents and inherited deficiencies, 
you should not grow nervous. If you 
have become so, the sooner it can be 
taken in hand the better. Nervous- 
ness can be lessened, and in time to a 
great degree abolished, by a regulated 
life of healthy activity and properly 
varied interests, and by dealing in- 
stantly on their appearance with cer- 
tain s3 7 mptoms like chronic indeci- 
sion, difficulty of attention, and too 
easy fatigue. Taken early, these can 
be stopped; allowed to increase to 

193 



SELF HELP FOR NERVOUS WOMEN 

their fullest growth, they possess 
their victim's life and being to such 
an extent that nothing is left but a 
strong course in a physician's hands 
— or a more or less cheerful resigna- 
tion to the loss of the greater part of 
what is best in life. 



INDEX 

A PAGE 

Anxiety, mental, a cause of nervousness 28 

Appetite, an index of health 142 

nervous loss of 103 

Attention, imperfect power of 57 

B 

Blood in brain less during sleep 83 

Books for the quiet-hour 62 

" Brain-food " nonsense 110 

Breathing in hysterical seizures 49 

rapid in fright 43 

C 

Catholics and nervousness 183 

Causes of nervousness, vide nervousness. 

Children, nervousness in 123 

Christians and nervousness 165 

Church, the Roman Catholic, and nervousness.. 169 

Clergymen and patients 168 

qualifications of to treat disease 175 

unfitted to treat nervousness 173 

Confession a relief 190 

Contemplation, an hour for 62 

Control teaches self-control 141 

Cousins, marriage of 125 

D 

Decision, difficulty of 54 

Diagnosis, difficulties of 172 

195 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Diagnosis of insanity by clergymen 174 

Diet fallacies Ill 

Discipline of games 140 

Distaste for food not indigestion 103 

Doctor and patient 190 

the sympathetic 152 

Drunkards' children epileptic 125 

E 

Economy of energy 74 

Emmanuel method, reasons against its practice. 177 

Emotion, counterfeit 148 

excessive, a cause of nervousness 26 

excessive expression of 38 

experiments on the theory of 44 

false 185 

the result of physical expression 43 

too great repression of 42, 68 

Energy, economized by forming habits 90 

economized by rest , 77 

economy of 118 

misdirected 77 

Environment in childhood 125 

Example and precept 144 

Exercise a corrective of nervousness 64 

choice of 139 

F 

Failure of religious help, reasons for 168, 170 

Faith and its lack 170 

Fasting-patients 105 

Fatigue, a natural warning 33 

excessive 23 

hinders sleep 81 

how to measure 81, 82 

196 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Fatigue of nerve-centres 24 

physiology of l()(i 

Feeding by hand 115 

Feeling and its imitations 147 

Food, children's, often insufficient 127 

for children 120 

importance of 104, 100 

superstitions about 109 

G 

Games, uses of 136, 137, 140 

Garden-work 65 

Girls' out-door sports 130 

Gymnasium work 136 

dangers of 138 

H 

Habit, definition of 88 

economizes energy 89 

Health a preventive of nervousness 134 

Heredity 124 

and nervousness 132 

Hints on eating 114 

Hobbies, cultivation of 64, 65 

Hodges on fatigue 107 

Holmes, O. W., on heredity 132 

Hygiene of nervous children 135 

Hypnotism, dangers of 177 

emotional expression under 45 

Hysteria a real disease 171 

Hysterics, treatment of 48 

I 

Indecision, overcoming 55 

Indigestion 103 

197 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Indigestion in children 130 

Infection, imaginary 188 

Insanity, fear of 58 

symptoms 174 

Interests, cultivation of 64 

J 

James on economy of energy 78 

James's theory of emotion 43 

Jews and nervousness 183 

L 

Lange, theory of emotion 43 

Loss of appetite 103 

M 

Malnutrition a cause of nervousness 108 

Man an omnivorous animal 113 

Medicines for sleep dangerous 83, 117 

Memory, impaired, a symptom of nervousness . . 57 

Ministers fail to help nervousness 168 

Monotony a fault in diet 127 

of life, causing nervousness 27 

N 

Napoleon on sleep 80 

" Nerve-foods " absurd 110 

Nervous exhaustion, misuse of the phrase 15 

prostration, wrong use of the phrase. . . . 15, 16 

system, description of the 19 

Nervousness, a disorder of functional activity. . 33 

a symptom not a disease 21 

caused by malnutrition 108 

caused by monotonous life 27, 28 

198 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Nervousness, causes of 25 

character as exciting 25 

mental 20 

physical 20 

predisposing 26 

temperamental 26 

work and worry 73 

control of 36 et seq. 

definition of 13, 17 

early symptoms of 23 

asthenia 24 

fatigue 23 

impaired attention 23 

irritability 23 

tremulousness 23 

emotional excess causes 26 

established 94 

established, schedule of life in . . 98 

established, symptoms of 97 

exercise a corrective of 64 

in Catholics 183 

in children, parents a cause of 129 

in Jews 183 

in teachers 74 

in women, special causes of 27 

mental anxiety a cause of 28 

physical basis of 34 

physical causes of 72 

prevention of 63, 67 

rest in prevention of 74 

sources of 17 

from shock 18 

starvation a cause of 34 

symptoms of 30 

mental 30 

199 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Nervousness, symptoms of physical 31 

variety of symptoms characterizing 32 

work alone not c cause of 72 

Neurasthenia 14 

from trifling causes 29 

misuse of the word 15 

physical basis of, not affected by religion.. 171 

O 

Oatmeal and Scotchmen 113 

Obsessions and their cultivation 147 

Opium in soothing-syrups 130 

Order and tidiness, distinction between 91 

P 

Pain a natural warning 33 

how best borne 50 

Patient, the vampire 157 

Patients, religions of 166 

Parents, nervous 124 

Photography, suggestions for use of 65 

Punctuality economizes energy 90 

Q 

Quakers and nervousness 183 

Quiet-hour 122 

a useful aid 59 

R 

Relaxation, James on 78 

mental 78 

how to get 84 

physical, helps repress emotions 47 

Religion and nervousness 164 

200 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Religions, various, and nervousness 181 

Rest as preventive of nervousness 74 

and relaxing 75 

before meals 115 

how to take it 77 

Rice and Japanese 113 

S 

Schedule, changes in 121 

for the day saves energy 92 

in established nervousness 98 

Self-control 39 

part of Quaker education 183 

Self-fulness 155 

Self-study 37 

Shock, physical, as a cause of nervousness. . 18, 28 

Sleep, amount necessary 87 

fancies about 116 

how to invite 79, 81, 82, 85 

Napoleon on 80 

physiology of 82 

Soothing-syrup and other poisons 130 

Spencer, Herbert, on children's food 128 

Starvation, a cause of nervousness 34 

Strain, mental, increased by bodily tension 47 

of attention in gymnasium work 138 

Sugar, good for children 127 

Suggestion, treatment by 33 

in hypnotism 178 

useless -against physical ailments 34, 35 

Sympathy, definition of 145 

professional 152 

the helping kind 161 

true 150 

true and false 146 

201 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Symptoms and how to acquire them 188 

System economizes energy 91 

T 

Teachers and nervous break-down 74 

Teething, superstitions about 129 

Truthfulness 184 

V 

Vegetable diet Ill 

W 

Wakefulness, household remedies for 83 

early 85 

Work and worry 73 

seldom causes nervousness 72 

with mental strain a cause of nervousness. 28 

Worry, attitude of mind toward 51 

a cause of nervousness 27, 28 



A SANE, SCIENTIFIC, AND INSPIRING BOOK 

WHY WORRY? 

By GEORGE L. WALTON, M.D, 

Frontispiece. i2mo. 275 pages. Cloth, $1.00 net 

THIS book is no cure-all, but it has a 
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— Chicago Eve?iing Post. 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS PHILADELPHIA 



